Printer drivers exist for windows versions, but on DOS they exist for applications. i.e. you need a WordPerfect printer driver or a Lotus 1-2-3 printer driver etc.

Most older printers also had "emulation" or compatibility modes as well where pretty much any printer would work when choosing a number of other printers to print as. Some had jumpers to select the different emulation modes as well.

The amount of people that collect old printers would be pretty small so not much demand.
And the more popular printer's say HP Laserjet's and the like ether had drivers included with windows or were compatible with a similar device.
Even back in the late 90's I used an Epson driver for my Brother inkjet printer.

But now I'm interesting in what printers you have.
I'd like an old HP and dot matrix but don't have the room

I knew dos drivers are on a per-application basis.

well, lessee... my 'current' printer is a Canon... 2900? inkjet. I've always had good luck with canons.
Then I have Canon BJC-80 portable printer (no battery for it though)
And my beloved Panasonic kxp 2130/2135 24-pin dot matrix
Then there's the Gorilla Banana, DOS equivalent of the CBM 1525... 7 x 5 pin dot-matrix with no descenders.
Then in a box somewhere I have my Okimate10 (Or is it Okimate20? The one for DOS). I need to get some fax paper for it, though I do have a couple of the ribbons for it
And then I have my two CBM 1520 plotters... which I gave up on because the gears seemed to stop working, but now I've found a source for brass gears, so...
And my CGP-115 plotter... same as the 1520, just for the Tandy. I haven't tried it out yet; I've a bunch of pens still in package, but they may be dried out. I really loved the 1520s for stuff like program listings. I'd written my own syntax highlighter for 6502 assembler and the listings look awesome.

I think that's all I have (for now).

Don't forget scanner and fax drivers!

The problem though is that often, these printer driver CDs would often ship with commercial productivity software packages, like card/banner/label makers... so you'd have to stick to the strictly-drivers floppies or the internet update files to stay safe.

Right, sometimes they'd ship with what they thought were the 10 or 20 most popular and said others were available from their BBS or sending $5 or something for it on a disk.

The state of archiving with scanner / fax / printer drivers seems really poor compared to other hardware. It'd be fun to contribute a few disc images / zip files if I have any around, I shall look.

I have a monster Konica Magicolor 7300 out of commission because of absurdly expensive toner. Produces gorgeous prints when it works.

I had a colour dot matrix way back and its attempts to print photos or CD cover art were artwork in themselves. Everything it printed was very uncanny valley, it was delightful. I'd love another.

I had a color 9 pin back in the day, and the OS had a special color driver so it printed colors in the right order so as not to muddy the ribbon, then I ran a program that thought it knew better and went straight for the hardware, not through driver, and it trashed the $60 ribbon. Jerk. So yah, mostly I just converted stuff to greyscale dithered after that. That machine, a Citizen, somehow had a case that amplified the noise of printing, ran it open most of the time. Later I got a BJ-200 or 210 and that was my favorite inkjet, everything else seemed noisier, more expensive, bigger for no apparent reason, etc... I probably still have one of that series still and might try necromancing it if I find BC-02s for cheap some time. Then I had a bunch of inkjets that made various promises of photorealism and crap, but all drank ink like it was happy hour, screwed up frequently and were generally trash. Then laser printers because I got smart.

I've been using laser printers exclusively since the early 2000's. I only had a single inkjet I purchased myself and that was because I needed it for a college class where I had to print some higher quality color pictures. That was also in the early 2000's. After that class I switched to laser only... my first laser printer being a really old one that somebody in my dorm had thrown out because somebody had stuck an inkjet transparency through it and it got stuck.

Cleaned it out and used that printer for a few years before it died.

Think I had an HP LJ4 or LJ5 after that and then a Dell/Lexmark that I picked up at a thrift store for $7... it only needed the Drum counter reset. Used that printer for 5-6 years before it wore out enough to need me to spend more money than I wanted to on it.

Now I have another HP, but it is color, can print double sided and has a scanner built in. Been using this one for over 5 years now and generally spend about $40 for a complete set of aftermarket high capacity toner carts. We've gone through tons and tons of reams of paper with this one and it hasn't given us a single issue.

Being an old fart that started with DOS I have never really needed a Printer driver until about WinXP when I switched to laser printers. The old Okidata Dot Matrix and Panasonics had drivers built in to most apps and Win9x.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-09-28, 21:57:

I've been using laser printers exclusively since the early 2000's. I only had a single inkjet I purchased myself and that was because I needed it for a college class where I had to print some higher quality color pictures. That was also in the early 2000's. After that class I switched to laser only...
Think I had an HP LJ4 or LJ5 after that and then a Dell/Lexmark that I picked up

Yep the older Lexmarks and Dell lasers were great ! Had a T520 and a Optra 1855 that both lasted over a decade. When they died got a Konika-Minolta 2430DL color in about 2006 and it lasted until 2016.
Today have two Samsungs: C410 and C430, both are cheaper color lasers but work just great under XP thru Win10.

As for Old Printer Drivers: I have the original MS Dev Network cd's from April 1997, one has the drivers not included with OSR2 and some for Win3.1 and could probably up them to the Library.
Quirk is who still uses a 1996 printer that needs a Win95 driver ?
Added: SquallStrife is the owner of the library and never created a Printer category AFAIK or had to remove it . Will send a PM and see if it OK to up them.

Yes, you could set to Epson FX-80 emulation mode and forget about it, most dot matrixes, early inkjets supported it too, but didn't look so good as they could do if you did that. Tendency to spidery looking fonts.

@Horun - We had some HP Laserjet 4 and 5 printers at work until a few years ago. Windows 10 even had built in drivers. Those were released from 1993 to 1996.

Why were they replaced though? Did security not obey the directive to shoot printer salesmen on sight? .. and if not then, at least before they got to a managers office.

They had somewhere in the range of 300,000 or so pages printed to each of them and we're starting to have issues.

They weren't cost effective to keep running anymore and everybody that needed printers in their offices needed color.

I was in charge of the small printers... I negotiated the contracts for new printers and maintenance.

I did keep those ancient printers as long as I could. The few that were still working ok went to good homes.

Hokay, I suppose they earned a cushy retirement. 😁

I love to taunt printer salesmen with the per page cost of my laserjet(s) though, their eyes boggle. Especially when they think something like 8 cents is cheap.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-09-29, 03:06:

They had somewhere in the range of 300,000 or so pages printed to each of them and we're starting to have issues.

Some years ago I got a HP LaserJet 4350n from work for free. It is big, damn loud, only black/white and had ~1,048,000 pages printed back then - but I love it and had no issues until then, the 4350n is very fast and delivers sharp prints...and it has LAN (no crappy WiFi)...and firmware updates!

Never again I would buy an inkjet printer. We had three from 1998 until mid 2010s (Canon BJC-250, Canon PIXMA iP1500, HP DeskJet somthing) - dried out ink, defects and low-res were extremely annoying...and expensive.

This 4350n is a real workhorse and no consumer crippleware.

kind regards
soggi

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-09-29, 03:26:

Hokay, I suppose they earned a cushy retirement. 😁

I love to taunt printer salesmen with the per page cost of my laserjet(s) though, their eyes boggle. Especially when they think something like 8 cents is cheap.

8c per page... Aggghhh.. that's insane. We had something like 0.4 or 0.5c per page IF we went over the pre-paid max per month which pretty much never happened.

The copiers were even cheaper at something like 0.1c per page.

The whole Win 3.1 WDL\Printer driver library off that CD2 of April 1997 Dev Network is only 12.6Mb with 76 individual driver executable installers. About 4Mb 7zipped.
Unfortunately I never got the documentation for the WDL library contents but each executable can be opened with 7Zip and you can view the .inf to see of each one to see what they are.
I do not have time right now to go thru all 76 drivers and create a full list but will post it to Vogons under Uncategorised with brief description (Windows 3.1 Printer Drivers from MS WDL).....
Here is what the first 17 drivers cover: