I have an old dos pc that has a program that prints a report to a
printer. I no longer have a printer that will interface with this pc.
Does anyone know of a way to have the report go to a floppy drive as a
text file instead of the printer port? Batch file maybe?
On Nov 13, 5:41 pm, Pinthetic <pinthe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I hope someone here has the answer.
> I have an old dos pc that has a program that prints a report to a
> printer. I no longer have a printer that will interface with this pc.
> Does anyone know of a way to have the report go to a floppy drive as a
> text file instead of the printer port? Batch file maybe?
If it's a genuine DOS program that writes directly to the hardware
address/IRQ of LPT1, you're at the mercy of the program and it's
options to redirect the print job. DOS isn't UNIX so there's no easy
way to redirect the output. You could look for a TSR that would
intercept the data written to 0x378 and write it to a file, but such
programs might be hard to find in this day and age.
You can try setting up Windows 95 or 98 on the PC, then use it to
capture the LPT port and send the job elsewhere...
Or go to a thrift store and buy a parallel printer :)
If your program wrote to the standard output device (i.e., the
screen), you could redirect that pretty easily to anywhere.
But, generally, you can't do what you're asking if the programs writes
directly to the device port itself, whether it's PRN: (standard
printer), LPT1: (specifically the first parallel port), or COM1:
(specifically the first serial port).
There's undoubtedly a way to add networking support to your legacy pc.
With networking support, you can route the prn: device to a shared
printer on the network. Or, you could move the program and data to a
newer windows pc that has a printer and run it in a command window.
The easiest and cheapest way to solve this problem is to go down to
your local thrift shop and buy a parallel printer.
Craig
On Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:41:51 -0800 (PST), Pinthetic
<pinthe...@gmail.com> wrote:
>I hope someone here has the answer.
>I have an old dos pc that has a program that prints a report to a
>printer. I no longer have a printer that will interface with this pc.
>Does anyone know of a way to have the report go to a floppy drive as a
>text file instead of the printer port? Batch file maybe?
> A good old TSR - we used it a lot back in the day.
> viperrwk
Pity that web site (last updated in 2005) had most of its files on geocities - so PRN2FILE isn't available through them (unless you are familiar with archive.org). however dropping "PRN2FILE" in google quickly finds more copies...
John :-#)#
-- (Please post followups or tech enquiries to the newsgroup)
John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9
Call (604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games)
www.flippers.com "Old pinballers never die, they just flip out."
> > A good old TSR - we used it a lot back in the day.
> > viperrwk
> Pity that web site (last updated in 2005) had most of its files on > geocities - so PRN2FILE isn't available through them (unless you are > familiar with archive.org). however dropping "PRN2FILE" in google > quickly finds more copies...
> John :-#)#
> -- > (Please post followups or tech enquiries to the newsgroup)
> John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9
> Call (604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games)
> www.flippers.com > "Old pinballers never die, they just flip out."
Ugh - sorry about that. Couldn't check the link from my iPod when I
posted that message.
Also should mention that prn2file may not work depending upon a number
of factors including the memory usage of the application and how the app
uses the printer port. Nonetheless its still worth a try.
Another alternative is to run the app in a virtual machine and capture
the output from that. But that may be more than what Mario is willing to
do here.
The real pity is that the original publisher doesn't have this available
on their site. But that's a whole different discussion...
