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First post, by john11139

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I had a old Dell computer that I had for years and had a serial parallel port and using a HP Diskjet printer 895 cse. I also had a HP psc 1350 hooked up with just a usb wire. To print non DOS documents and other things in Windows 7. ( I am running Windows 7, 32 bit) I went to a newer computer Dell OptiPlex 790 and realized it did not have a serial parallel port. I downloaded a free DOS program it allowed me to print on both printers with just using the usb ports. Worked great. I now have run on to a Dell OptiPlex 980 which has a serial parallel port and works ok on the 895 printer using the serial parallel cable. But cannot print on the 1350 or 895 by just using the usb port. I am afraid the 895 printer will finally wear out and quit or the 980 computer may quit and it is hard to find a computer with a serial parallel port. So why can't I just use the USB cord on the 980. Do I have a setting wrong somewhere? Or when I downloaded the DOS print program, did something go wrong? Need help. The documents that I mainly print originally designed for 16 bit. But every computer I bought had 64 bit system and I reinstalled 32.

Reply 1 of 1, by JosSchaars

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The HP Deskjet 895cse has a parallel and USB port. It supports PCL 3, so you can directly print to it by a DOS program in Windows 32-bit (NTVDM).
The HP psc 1350 only has an USB port. That could be circumvented, but it doesn’t support PCL (DOS input) and so needs a Windows driver installed at the PC.

The free DOS program will be a Windows one. A DOS-to-Windows print processor that captures the output your program sends to the parallel port. Then translates that to what’s expected by Windows printer drivers. The capturing worked in Windows 32-bit since the parallel port as seen by your program is that of Windows.
In Windows 32-bit you had: DOS program LPT output -> captured -> translated -> Windows driver

For DOSBox you have to figure out if your program supports printing to a file: Install that DOS-to-Windows print processor (WinPrint?), then try what printing to LPT1 brings.
If not, have a look at vDos (www.vdos.info), it will take care of DOS printing hassles.

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