This is an old trick and I have it documented in the mTCP PDF
documentation.  Here is a quick overview.

If you have a printer that is network enabled and it speaks Postscript,
PCL, Epson ESC P2, or plain text then you can "print to a file" under DOS
and then use Netcat to send the file to your printer.  Most network
printers listen on port 9100, and they'll interpret what they receive on
that port in the same way they would interpret the data from a parallel or
serial port.  This is known as the "raw" port and HP introduced it back in
the 90s.

I've used this trick to print graphics from a PCjr to my modern Brother
laser printer.  The graphics were formatted for an IBM Graphics Printer,
which uses a subset of Epson ESC P2.  The printer can handle PostScript,
PCL, Epson ESC P2, and plain text.  The netcat command should look like
this:

nc -target 192.168.2.20 9100 -bin < testfile.prn

Note that the -bin option is needed because your printer output might
contain control codes.

That's it.  It is simple and it works.


-Mike
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Reply via email to