Re: easy way to print from xywrite

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

J R FOX wrote:
 neither of which is USB. My current computer has a bad Par. Port;  But I *do* have a Parallel -
to - USB adapter. Its USB connector would be for the *computer* end of it.
Jordan--and everyone else--profound apologies. Looking through my
archive, I came across Jordan's earlier post on this and realized
that I had completely misread this one. So scratch my earlier
reply and let's start over.
We're trying to print to a Parallel printer from a USB port,
using an adaptor. (For the benefit of those less hardware-savvy
than Jordan, that means the USB end has a standard rectangular
USB connector, like that on a flash drive, and the LPT end has a
Centronics masculine D-shell connector. If we were doing the
reverse, printing to a USB printer from a parallel port, the PC
end would be a 25-pin masculine D shell connector, and the
printer end the samller, roughly house-shaped USB connector.)
Now assuming these adaptors work as they're supposed to (anyone
have any experience?) the procedure should be the same as
printing to a USB printer directly, namely mapping the USB port
to LPTx using the Net Use command.

To do this:
1. Make sure the printer can print in Windows (or OS/2, but I
know nothing about that, unfortunately; I assume you can
translate what I'm saying here).

2. The printer is declared shared in Windows.
3. Get your PC's name and the printer's share name. Both should
be kept to 8 characters, no spaces.
4. Determine if the PC "thinks" it already has an LPT1. This
could get dicey in Lordan's case, because he _had_ one, and the
opsys may not "know" it's dead. He is probably well advised to
use a number one higher than the last LPT listed in Control
Panel->Device Manager->System->Ports.

5. Armed with qall that info, open a commsand prompt and type
NET USE LPTx \\PCname\prshare
where x is the number you've decided on for the LPT, PCName is
the name of the PC, and prshare is the name of the shared printer.

You should get
Command completed successfully.
If not, possible sources of error are mistyped names, a
too-zealous firewall or other security setting (about which I
wish I knew more; or insufficiently configured network.
If you were able to specify lpt1 in your NET USE command, it can
at this point be helpful to open edit.com (in
c:\windows\system32; still there, even in Vista), create a small
file, and try printing it. Edit.com will apparently only print to
lpt1 or what it "thinks" is lpt1. If it prints, you know you have
net use correctly configured.

If you're not using lpt1, at least type
Net Use
and
Net View
at the command prompt and see what they report.
Once that's straightened out, launch Xy and call settings.dfl (or
whatever your standard default file is). Go to the bottom, and
edit the PP table so that one of the entries reads

lptx[tab]c:\xy4\ESCPnnn.prn[tab]Driver for Epson on USB
where x is the lpt number you used in NET USE; c:\xy4 is the
fully qualified path of editor.exe's dir; and ESCPnnn.prn is the
Xy Epson .prn you want to use. And, of course, [tab] is a tab
character; look at it in Expanded view to be sure; I wasted a lot
of time when I was testing Vista because my pp table was riddled
with spaces where it should have had tabs.

Store and reload settings.dfl
Now command setpp #, where # is the rank of the printer
file you want to use (i.e., 1 if its the first, 2 if it's the
second, and so on). To confirm that the right one loaded, command
va/nv $pr
The appropriate .prn should be listed on the prompt line.
Now call or create a file, make sure its UseFont codes correspond
to real fonts in the .prn file, and
Print

It should work.
If not, specify as much as you can, including differences between
Win and OS/2 configuration and networking.

--
Patricia M. Godfrey
priscamg@xxxxxxxx