My dad hooks up a relatively new (2005ish) Lexmark laser printer to his AT tower to print stuff out on occasion. It hooks up via parallel. I remember when he first did it I was skeptical but he insisted it would work and it does. He uses some kind of tax database program on DOS.

ASCII output as well as PCL and/or PS should print correctly, depending on printer support.

I use an second PC as a "Converter" from Postscript to GDI-Printer.

The old PC just see a shared Postscript Printer on Network.

But the other PC takes the Data, renders the Postscript to a Graphic and prints it to the USB-Windows-GDI-Printer.

I've got an HP LaserJet 1320 from 2005 which works perfectly with the built-in Windows 3.1 PCL drivers. I even found newer Windows 3.1 drivers from the HP Website for a LaserJet 4M I think, which let me use the built-in duplexer from my printer. Apparently the PCL commands for that were compatible too 😁

Sammy wrote:

I use an second PC as a "Converter" from Postscript to GDI-Printer.

The old PC just see a shared Postscript Printer on Network.

But the other PC takes the Data, renders the Postscript to a Graphic and prints it to the USB-Windows-GDI-Printer.

That's unlikely to work for DOS software that outputs directly to LPT.

i didn't try it, but i think it is possible to map a network printer to LPT und dos / win3.x
NET USE LPT1 //server/printer

Old software can be used with Dosprint.
It captures data send to lpt and redirect it to a windows printer.

But you need a more modern system like XP for that.

I tested it with word 5.5 for dos.
It prints to lpt1, but dosprint redirect it to one of the known windows printers you choose.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work for pure DOS. Direct hardware calls are intercepted in certain audio drivers (SoftMPU and SBPCI DOS drivers), but this imposes certain limitations and requirements. Perhaps a hardware solution connected to the LPT port might be doable?

I'm thinking anything that supports basic PCL/Laserjet compatibility might do the trick.

That or PostScript would be great, if your dos applications support it .

Then, if you can configure your dos applications to print to files instead of an actual parallel (lpt) port, you would only need to copy the resulting files to any computer with a working printer and process/print with GhostPCL or GhostScript .

PCL ? Isn't that too new ?
I thought HPGL was more common in the mid-late 80s..

According to Wikipedia, PCL 1 and 3 were introduced in products launched in 1984 .

HPGL was initially designed for plotters but apparently was supported by HP printers as well (Wikipedia). I do not know how common software support for it was.
HPGL/2 functionality was integrated into PCL5 (no idea if it is backward compatible with HPGL).

I used a Fujitsu DL900 in the early to mid 90s and had to IBM Proprinter XL24 and Epson LQ-2550 emulation most of the time, but those protocols have likely long been abandoned.
I do recall that HP Laserjet II (PCL4, I believe) was often offered as an option in programs I used at the time .