[hastur]

I have win98 with a dos based program I need to print from. My old printer just failed on me so I bought a new Brother HL-2040 laser printer. Any help?

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Because the printer is so new and DOS is so old, there may not be a DOS driver available for it.

Have you tried running the program in a Command Prompt Window, which then means Windows should handle the print requests?

[Neil Jones]

Because the printer is so new and DOS is so old, there may not be a DOS driver available for it.

Have you tried running the program in a Command Prompt Window, which then means Windows should handle the print requests?

[pip22]

The method of connection to the PC can also be problematic for DOS printing or printing from a DOS program these days. DOS programs can only communicate with the printer through the dedicated printer-port on a PC (Windows refers to this as LPT1). this used be the universal method on old printers, but new printers almost always use USB connectivity nowadays, which doesn't work outside of Windows except for very basic keyboard input (to invoke the BIOS setup for example).
My printer (3 years old) has dual connections (USB + Lpt1) but most new printers have abandoned LPT1 altogether because the need to print from DOS is now so rare.

Edited by pip22, 17 November 2005 - 04:51 AM.