Network printing from Win9x DOS boxes?

[somewan]

I just replaced a 10+ years old NEC laser printer because

it supported only PostScript level 1 and was horribly slow

by today's standards.

The replacement is a Samsung CLP-550N colour laser with

1200 dpi resolution, PS level 3, 10/100 Mbps Ethernet and

as a bonus that wasn't on my list of requirements, namely

a built-in duplex printing support.

I just printed 11 pages of a PDF document faster than the

old printer could choke on a single page!

However, it remains to be resolved how to print from DOS

boxes. The old printer was attached with a parallel cable

to a Linux machine running Samba, and shared as

\\COMPUTER\NEC - the Win98 printer config dialogs

have a "Capture Printer Port" option that may be used

to associate a DOS "LPTx" device name with a network

path such as the one mentioned above.

However, the new printer is attached using Samsung's

software to a "Samsung network printer port" - no

network path is reported - but it ought not to matter,

as all Windows needs to do is to maintain the virtual

LPT-port and merely forward the data to printer

without further processing - just as it would do if it

did have a MS-style \\ network path...

Does anyone have any clues about this matter?

Of course I could attach it to a computer with a

parallel cable and share it, but that would defeat

the purpose of having a network printer in the

first place - namely to avoid the need for a

machine to serve as a print server.

(The printer listens on the Unix LPD port (515),

and supports the protocol, so making it work

with Linux/BSD should at least be easy...)

[Bolt]

Can you share the printer?

If so, map LPT1 to the share from command prompt (net use lpt1 \\computername\sharename).

[somewan]

Can you share the printer?

If so, map LPT1 to the share from command prompt (net use lpt1 \\computername\sharename).

That's a clever idea, but not too clever for Win98.

I wonder if the other versions are as alert.

C:\WINDOWS>net use lpt2 \\c400\clp550n

Error 2106: This operation cannot be performed to your own computer;
it can be performed only on a server. For more information, contact
your network administrator.

[Bolt]

Dumb question: Did you enable "File and Print Sharing" and checked "I want to be able to allow others to print to my printer(s)"?

[somewan]

Dumb question: Did you enable "File and Print Sharing" and checked "I want to be able to allow others to print to my printer(s)"?

Yeah, and sharing the printer worked fine - connecting to it

from the local computer did not.