First post, by Moguera
- Rank
- Newbie
Some legacy DOS applications will run under Windows, others won't. 64 bit Windows won't run DOS applications at all. Users are increasingly investigating DOSBox as a solution to running their legacy DOS applications. However DOSBox was created for running DOS games and so has no printing support. Fortunately, there is a DOSBox "Megabuild" which does support printing.
PortTalk must be installed in order to print under Windows 2000 or XP, otherwise attempts to print will generate a Windows error. PortTalk is not required for Windows 9x. I have no idea if PortTalk will work under Vista or 7.
The default in the DOSBox .conf file for LPT1 is “parallel1=disabled”. One might think that “parallel1=printer” would be correct, but that didn't work for me. What did work was “parallel1=reallpt directlpt:378” for LPT1. This is for a local printer connected to LPT1 and the DOS program set to print to LPT1. Even my embedded HPPCL codes were seamlessly passed through to the printer. Below are the actual, relevant lines from my DOSBox .conf file:
[printer]
printer=true
dpi=360
width=85
height=110
##printoutput=png
printoutput=printer
##multipage=false
multipage=true
docpath=.
timeout=0
[parallel]
##parallel1=disabled
##parallel1=printer
parallel1=reallpt directlpt:378
parallel2=disabled
##parallel2=reallpt directlpt:BC00
parallel3=disabled
This should work for a printer connected to the LPT port integrated on the motherboard. It will not work with a PCI add-on parallel port card. Since the LPT port integrated on the motherboard appears to software as being on the ISA bus, an ISA add-on parallel port card.MAY work. However, the ISA bus was obsoleted long ago. The last time I searched, a few suppliers of industrial motherboards still offered new motherboards with ISA slots.
Windows 7 supports the LPT port integrated on the motherboard, but it otherwise will not support the ISA bus. An ISA card will be invisible to it.
Windows XP supports the ISA bus. Wouldn't it be nice if Microsoft were persuaded to keep offering it for legacy applications? Microsoft's CEO is Steve Ballmer if you care to contact him to lobby for it.
Links:
DOSBox Megabuilds
http://home.arcor.de/h-a-l-9000/
PortTalk
http://retired.beyondlogic.org/porttalk/porttalk.htm
Download: http://retired.beyondlogic.org/porttalk/porttalk22.zip