USB printers, again

[Paul Breeze paul.breeze@xxxxxxxx]

I have just purchased a HP 1000w laser printer in the UK -- the printer has recently been
superseded but PC World has them still for £100. This is a USB only printer but it comes with
PCL
5e emulation software which I have mentioned before. This software is installed as a second
printer driver during the installation process. It must be manually allocated a printer port, a
real port and one that is unoccupied. I used LPT1 since I have now removed my parallel port
printer. Once it was set up, printing from XY4 in a DOS windows under Windows 2000 was exactly as
it had been when printing to my old parallel port printer.

Clearly, then, it is not difficult to print from a DOS window to a USB printer.  What would it
take to persuade HP to release versions of this driver for all its printers, I wonder.

Alternatively, though sadly I am not currently in a position to test this, the driver supplied with
the HP1000 printer might work with other HP printers. In the documentation HP recommends a list
of printers to select for the DOS software, the most recent of which is a 6L. Since most XYWrite
users are employing old printer drivers, this would not be a big problem. The printer would need
to support PCL 5, which means a laser printer, I think.

Paul Breeze