Re Trouble

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

On 7 Nov 2003 Robert Holmgren gave us very detailed directions for
mapping an lpt port to a USB printer. Unfortunately, it looks as if
Microsoft is bound and determined to prove him right about 9x's being "a
pocket calculator." I did just as directed, and everything else worked
(Ping, getting a directory of a shared drive), but on commanding
NET.EXE USE LPT1 \\MyPCName\EpsonC82
(Persistent is not recognized by 9x)
I get
Error 2106: This operation cannot be performed to your own computer; it
can be performed only on a server. For more information contact your
network administrator.

(Got the same error message, minus "contact your network admin," when,
just for the heck of it, I tried doing it MS's way, through the point and
click menus--Start--Settings--Printers--RMB--Properties--Details--Capture
Printer Port.)

Then, to make assurance double sure, over at the office, where we have 5
PCs networked (all 9x), with an HP LJ 5000N connected to the lpt of one,
I did the same thing on another PC (running 98, 1st ed), mapping a
nonexistent LPT2 to the HP on the other PC. Loaded XyWrite, edited the PP
table of settings.dfl to assign the PostScript driver to lpt2, and
printed a small file. Took forever (this was a very underpowered
machine), but it worked.

In a way, it makes a crazy kind of sense: NT, 2K, and XP were designed to
be NOSes (well, "designed" as much as anything out of Redmond is); 9x
wasn't really, and basically expects a peer-to-peer setup. (Once reason
for its lousy security, but no one else has physical access to my
desktop.)

Totally academic for me, since the best XyWrite could get from the Epson
would be a data dump (no formatting), and I have the old HP-compat. Epson
laser hooked up to LPT1, and can do fancy printing from XyWin when I need
it. But after Robert gave us the detailed instructions, I felt
honor-bound to try them. And curious too. But the result is one more
reason to think Linux.

Sorry Robert had all that effort, but I learned some interesting things
about the innards of the system. And it should work for those with
NT-based opsyses.

Patricia