Printer Servers; is there a minimum spec?

[Kamitsukenu]

Hi there,

I've just joined a new company and I've found that the printers are dotted about on different PCs. I've recently freed up a very old machine, and was wondering if there is a minimum spec for a computer to be running as a printer server?

This beastie is (I think) a P3 800 Mhz machine running Win 98. Can I use it as a Printer Server, and if so, how many printers can I stick on it?

Thanks!

[FAT64]

Printers are not the fastest of peripherals! Disk space (for spooling) might be required if you will have large and numerous print jobs. Other than that, I'm sure it will be fine.

[arctirus]

To ease driver compatibility I'd try to run it with an os equal to or newer than what you plan to use as your client os.

[puntoMX]

This beastie is (I think) a P3 800 Mhz machine running Win 98. Can I use it as a Printer Server, and if so, how many printers can I stick on it?

That depends on what kind of printers they are. If they are USB you could buy some extra USB PCI cards with each 4 external ports, for parallel interfaced printers you could buy some PCI cards with one or 2 parallel ports on it.

Like arctirus told you, put an equal or better OS on it, but if it’s XP or Vista for example it will be enough to have Windows 2000 installed on it (Still they sell licenses, and they are very cheap ).

[Zxian]

Just a word of warning - don't put XP on your printer server if you're going to have multiple connections to the machine. Otherwise, you might end up with the problem in this thread.

See if you can buy a licence for Windows 2000 Server. It's still old enough that it'll fly on that machine, and it'll let you have as many connections as you want.

[nmX.Memnoch]

That's if you can even get a license for Windows 2000 Server anymore. Windows Server 2003 will run fine on a PIII 800 for print server duties. Print server resources really depend more on drive space (and the speed of the drive helps) since the documents are spooled on the server and sent to the printer from there. They don't generally require a lot of CPU or RAM resources (unless you use the crappy HP Universal Print Driver).

Having said that, you certainly don't want to try to run 2003 on a machine with anything less than 512MB RAM. Find out what the max of that system is...it'll either be 512MB, 768MB or 1GB. Put as much in the system as you can.

If the company is willing to spend a little money, you can get a decent entry-level, single dual-core CPU server fairly cheap ($2000USD or less if you're careful with the selections).

Edited August 7, 2007 by nmX.Memnoch

[Kamitsukenu]

Thanks for all your hints chaps, much obliged!

The computers are predominately XP, but finances are at a premium here; I'm sure the boss won't spring for anything that seems 'extravagant'!

I think the spec of the machine is a whopping 120Mb RAM, and a 10Gb Hard Drive.

I'm starting to think that this is a bad idea...

[puntoMX]

It not a bad idea at all, you don’t need more then that to get it run well.

Just give us a list of printers that you want to connect to it.

[arctirus]

I think the spec of the machine is a whopping 120Mb RAM, and a 10Gb Hard Drive.

Xp is licensed for up to 10 concurrent connections if memory serves me right. If you're not going to exceed that, by all means, install xp.

[nmX.Memnoch]

From the original post I can't imagine that he would have less than 10 connections. Suppose, for instance, that it was 2 printers and 6 PCs/users. Connecting each PC/user to both printers counts as two connections per PC/user. That's 12 connections...which exceeds the limit. Unless you only have 1 printer and a handful of PCs/users, using XP as a print server in a business environment is a Bad Idea^TM.