On 26 Dec 2000, at 0:38, Thomas Mueller wrote:
> You have to be careful, when you buy a printer, scanner or modem, that it is not
> Winblows-only.
But they're cheap! :-)
Personally a scanner / printer isn't life and death, but the internet
_is_ <G>, so all my modems have to be real ones.
Plus my computer is well equipped to handle even W2k, so there's
not a large amount of concern for me.
> What happens if you try to print from DOS on a Winblows-only parallel printer?
> Will DOS be able to print plain text, or will DOS not be aware of the printer's
> existence?
How do you mean? DOS doesn't manage peripherals like that; all
you see is the LPT port.
Most printers are able to be used from DOS; ie you send some
text to them and they will print it. You will almost definately miss
out on most features (such as graphics, colour, colour-matching,
high-quality, etc) unless you do some hacking or get the specs
(don't know where). eg for my Epson Stylus Colour 400 - one can
"copy con lpt" and print out what is typed, but not many graphical
DOS programs know about it; "Standard Epson" produces control
codes etc, but works on the old LQ-510-clone (which doesn't work
on the Duron 650 at all).
But some printers will not accept text like that, they only accept
basically the bitmap of what is to be printed. These are not non-W-
friendly. IIRC these are called GPI. I'm not sure, but if you try and
print directly to it, you'll get garbage printed and/or error
messages/beeps.
