On Sun, 20 Jun 2021 at 13:44, Bryan Kilgallin <[email protected]> wrote: > > From the FreeDOS PC, I can print a little over a hundred characters.
So does that meant that it _can_ print something? > Because I want to print, and it's called "PRINT"! OK, but it is not like that. DOS inherits a lot of its design from CP/M, but then after MS-DOS 2, MS started to try to bring some Xenix technology to DOS. So CP/M's special device names became a sort of magic files on DOS. The main magic files are... CON: -- the console, normally the screen, but can be redirected to a serial port with the CTTY command AUX: -- the auxiliary console (usually COM1:) PRN: -- the default printer LPT1: -- Line Printer 1, i.e. the 1st parallel port LPT2: -- the 2nd parallel port. From your copied output this is what you are redirecting to the network printer. COM1: (and 2--4) -- the serial ports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS#Reserved_device_names If you have mapped LPT2 to the network printer then you *must* print to LPT2. Sending to PRN or LPT1 won't do anything because there's no device there. The easy way to print to any port is just to copy or echo a file to that port. You *do not need* the PRINT command. The print command is for *background* printing, so that a user of a non-multitasking OS can get on with doing something else while the printer works. This is called printer spooling. Over the network it makes no difference, but it is one more thing to go wrong and one more thing to troubleshoot. Don't make anything any more complex than absolutely necessary when you're still trying to find if it works at all. The network does spooling anyway. It is totally redundant. Do not use it. > I have been experimenting. Whether I do or don't, the result's the same! If you print to LPT1 or PRN *without* assigning it to the network print queue, then nothing should come out. We need complete and accurate information to try to troubleshoot this, and you are not providing it... :-( > Then I used this option. It only worked after the file name. If before > it, I got a "not found" error! > "/d:device" > https://www.computerhope.com/printhlp.htm > > > [1] You don't need PRINT. To test if printing works, just do > > > > copy readme.txt lpt2: > {README.TXT => LPT2} > I notice a seemingly long time elapsed after entering the command on the > FreeDOS PC. So I reboot the printer. I do not know what the material in {curly brackets} means so I do not know how to interpret your reply. Is the printer a laser printer? If so, then when printing, it will store up text until it has a full page _then_ print it. A laser printer is physically only able to print a whole page at a time. It can't print a few lines at a time like a dot-matrix or inkjet. So if you only send a few lines, you need to send a form feed after it to tell the printer "that's all, now print it." https://www.winsteps.com/winman/formfd.htm So you'd do: echo myfile.txt > lpt2: ... then... echo ^L > lpt2: ^L means "press Ctrl and the letter l" -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: [email protected] – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: [email protected] Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
