Re: Xywrite printing problem.

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Ruby Madraswala wrote:

>     > Like everyone I don't want to give up XyWrite. I installed XyWrite on system
>     > with window 2000, everything works fine except I can't print to a network
>     > printer. Any Suggestions!
>     >
>     > Ruby

Ruby,

I've never worked from a network, so there are likely other setup issues and possibilities
that I don't know about. But I have been looking into what would be involved in switching
to network printing. This would involve putting in some sort of a hub (at the moment, the
NIC in my computer connects only to my DSL router, passing through a firewall device en
route to it), and replacing the current parallel cables with ethernet cable. Each printer
must be equipped with an ethernet card or print server box. I have acquired the latter
for the color printer, and the used HP-4 I bought some time ago came already equipped with
a JetDirect card. If I do this, it should free up one or two IRQs in the system, a good
thing these days.

But this only accounts for the hardware end of it. Another hurdle is that most legacy
programs of XyWrite's vintage only know about printing to the parallel ports (LPT1 or
LPT2), or, for that smaller audience that had a serial printer, the COM port. In looking
into this, I found out that OS/2 has a built-in service called LPRMON. When activated, it
intercepts print jobs bound for an LPT and diverts them to the network printing address
that has been established. So, that particular problem would be solved for me. Since I
also occasionally run Win-2000 on this multi-boot system, I certainly hope that W2K has
something equivalent to LPRMON. But, knowing how uninterested the Redmund mafia is in
backwards compatibility or accomodating anything of a legacy nature, I wouldn't bet any
money on it. Hopefully, someone reading this will know if this is one of the rare
exceptions.

Jordan