Re: USB printing ??? & DOS2USB pgm

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

John M. R. Bruner wrote:
> My XyWrite 3+ printed nicely to my old NEC Silentwriter via LPT1. But I
> cannot get XyWrite to talk to my new HP Laserjet 1020 (which receives by
> a USB port only).
> Yes, I am dazzled by the wealth of information and experience offered by
> our XyWrite gurus. (I've followed the correspondence, and checked the
> sites.) But you're way over my head for the most part.
> I have Postscript and HP Printer Tables from XyQuest going back to the
> 1980s, and they worked fine with the old NEC.
What do you mean by Printer Tables? Drivers (i.e., files ending .prn?)
or the font tables withing the .prn files? Does the LJ 1020 support
PostScript? (Look in the docs than came with it or HP's site.)
Let me see if I can clarify this for a non-geek. There are two
completely different issues:
1. Can the printer understand the data stream it's getting? That
depends on whether you have a printer driver (a Xy .prn file) that can
talk the same language the printer does. Most modern HP printers can
understand, in varying degrees, the older HP drivers.(See my previous
post about some fonts' not coming out right; but most do.)
2. Can Xy and the operating system between them send the data stream
to the printer? That involves the fact that when Xy was written, there
were no such things as USB ports. BUT you can make XyWrite "think" a
USB port is a parallel port.

Doing it is not difficult. But one needs some information:
1. Which version of Windows you are using? (One assumes XP if it's a
new box, but let's be sure.)
2. What the UNC name of the computer and its printer are. (We don't
need to know that, but you do.) Can someone with XP tell him how to
find it? Or I'll get the details at the office tomorrow. (BLAST
Microsludge for changing the menu and submenu layout with every
version of Windows, so that you have to go though a different routine
of point and click with each version. And the various NET commands are
different in 9x too, so I cannot be sure the ones that work here are
what he needs in XP or W2K.))
3. If the printer is near you or down the hall or something. (This
will affect the Persistent parameter.)
Once that's all clear, you just need to type a command at the command
line, probably just once, and your USB port will look like a parallel
port to Xy. We'll give you the command (it's been done several times
here, but...) Then you just need to see which of the various HP
drivers works best with your printer. Which Xy printer drivers do you
have? (Do DIR hp*.prn to get a list.) Don't worry about soft fonts or
things like that yet. Stick to Times and Courier and get it printing
first.
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx