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Can't print from DOSBox

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First post, by MattB1973

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Hello!

New here and still very new to DOSBox.

I'm an IT professional working on upgrading an office into a new decade. And by that, I mean from the 1980s to now.* 😀 As you can imagine, this brought me into contact with DOSBox and something called Megabuild 6, which is serving as life support for their very old piece of software that runs their billing (and, yes, even prints to a 25-pin Epson printer that prints on paper that has the perforated margins with feed holes to advance the paper faithfully).

The old PC that's hosting the billing software has a 25-pin connector, but the new PC does not. The new one only has USB ports. Both run Windows 10 (latest updates).

With Google as my guide, I tried the following:

  • shared the printer as a network device and link it to LPT1 using PowerShell's NET USE command
  • messed around with the configuration file (something about not able to load font roman.ttf)
  • printed to a file, but this gets way too convoluted to be practical
  • 25-pin to USB adapter

I've included a simplified version of the configuration file and moved the printer and parallel settings sections to the top for ease of readability.

I've probably not included enough detail, so please feel free to ask those important questions. I'm not sure if they allow editing the OP or not, but if so, I'll edit to include those for anyone reading later.

THE GOAL (obviously): to somehow bridge that LPT1 port to print on a USB connected printer (and/or to a network printer)

Thanks in advance!

*I'm not even joking: these people are still using an electric typewriter for some jobs!

Attachments

  • Filename
    dosbox-SVN_MB6.conf
    File size
    1.65 KiB
    Downloads
    65 downloads
    File comment
    Customized configuration file for DOSBox Megabuild 6
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 1 of 7, by _Rob

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Megabuild is no longer maintained. And printing is not supported by regular DOSBox, nor is running anything other then games.

You should be looking into either a DOSBox fork that does support printing, like DOSBox-X or vDOS, or you should be looking into running an emulator like VirtualBox or VMware.

Reply 2 of 7, by MattB1973

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_Rob wrote on 2021-12-19, 11:16:

Megabuild is no longer maintained. And printing is not supported by regular DOSBox, nor is running anything other then games.

You should be looking into either a DOSBox fork that does support printing, like DOSBox-X or vDOS, or you should be looking into running an emulator like VirtualBox or VMware.

Thanks for those recommendations. I think I'm going to just leave that program and computer alone and let them deal. They were going to switch to QuickBooks after the tax season is over anyway.

(I mean an electric typewriter...)

Reply 3 of 7, by JosSchaars

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MattB1973 wrote on 2021-12-20, 16:58:
_Rob wrote on 2021-12-19, 11:16:

Megabuild is no longer maintained. And printing is not supported by regular DOSBox, nor is running anything other then games.

You should be looking into either a DOSBox fork that does support printing, like DOSBox-X or vDOS, or you should be looking into running an emulator like VirtualBox or VMware.

Thanks for those recommendations. I think I'm going to just leave that program and computer alone and let them deal. They were going to switch to QuickBooks after the tax season is over anyway.

(I mean an electric typewriter...)

If they now use DOS Quicken or QuickBooks, they could have a look at: https://vdos.proboards.com/search/results?cap … _only_made_by=0. To more safely pass the period until the switch to Windows Quickbooks is made.

Reply 4 of 7, by MattB1973

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If they now use DOS Quicken or QuickBooks, they could have a look at: https://vdos.proboards.com/search/results?cap … _only_made_by=0. To more safely pass the period until the switch to Windows Quickbooks is made.

The executive made the decision today: no more DOSBox hosting old, old software. They're switching to QuickBooks like pronto. Out of my hands. Thank God. 😀

Reply 5 of 7, by JosSchaars

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MattB1973 wrote on 2021-12-21, 02:05:

The executive made the decision today: no more DOSBox hosting old, old software. They're switching to QuickBooks like pronto. Out of my hands. Thank God. 😀

Will be the better choice than wasting more time with DOSBox. Fingers crossed the migration is not that painful and they get accustomed to Windows Quickbooks quickly.

Reply 6 of 7, by Wengier

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DOSBox-X and vDos/Plus are all derived from DOSBox with support for non-gaming purposes (DOSBox-X supports both gaming and application usages, whether text-mode or graphical, DOS, Windows 3.x or 9x, whereas vDos/Plus is mainly for running text-mode end-user applications, although unfortunately recent versions of vDos have become nagware in networked environments unless registered).

Reply 7 of 7, by MattB1973

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JosSchaars wrote on 2021-12-21, 08:37:
MattB1973 wrote on 2021-12-21, 02:05:

The executive made the decision today: no more DOSBox hosting old, old software. They're switching to QuickBooks like pronto. Out of my hands. Thank God. 😀

Will be the better choice than wasting more time with DOSBox. Fingers crossed the migration is not that painful and they get accustomed to Windows Quickbooks quickly.

Thanks very much (in their behalf. For me: not my monkeys, not my circus 😀 ). They don't have a very long client list in that program, so it shouldn't be too much of a headache and it stands as a shining example that the phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" doesn't apply universally in the IT industry.

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