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At work, an old machine running Win2k and an Atari emulator is still used because reasons. The emulator always prints to the standard printer and that worked fine for decades.

Now our new masters, in their wisdom, decided to put all of our file servers into the cloud with SMB shares version 3.1.1 (Through a shaky 6-30 Mbit connection no less but that's another story.) The old W2k machine only speaks SMB1 and needs to be replaced. I got a replacement with a COM port (Yes we need that too) and got everything to work except for the printing. The software sends raw PCL/Epson code to the parallel port of the emulated Atari. (I should know, I wrote it)

This used to 'just work', now the print jobs just seem to vanish into thin air. Not even a blip in the spooler. I thought of redirecting LPT1: to an IP address, because our printers are just listening to raw data at port 9100.

There's a syntax on the net, something like 'net use LPT1: \server\blabla' I tried that after work today and got error 66, then gave up for today. I'm spent and will probably break more than I can fix. Just wondering if any of you have encountered a similar challenge and can point in the direction of a solution.

At work, an old machine running Win2k and an Atari emulator is still used because reasons. The emulator always prints to the standard printer and that worked fine for decades. Now our new masters, in their wisdom, decided to put all of our file servers into the cloud with SMB shares version 3.1.1 (Through a shaky 6-30 Mbit connection no less but that's another story.) The old W2k machine only speaks SMB1 and needs to be replaced. I got a replacement with a COM port (Yes we need that too) and got everything to work except for the printing. The software sends raw PCL/Epson code to the parallel port of the emulated Atari. (I should know, I wrote it) This used to 'just work', now the print jobs just seem to vanish into thin air. Not even a blip in the spooler. I thought of redirecting LPT1: to an IP address, because our printers are just listening to raw data at port 9100. There's a syntax on the net, something like 'net use LPT1: \\server\blabla' I tried that after work today and got error 66, then gave up for today. I'm spent and will probably break more than I can fix. Just wondering if any of you have encountered a similar challenge and can point in the direction of a solution.

(post is archived)

[–] • 1 pt

Is the printer configured in windows at all?

On the net use command -- What does NET VIEW\{server} show? is that the same thing you are attempting to use in the NET USE command? have you checked the rediection guard built into winblows these days? it stop non-admin redirects from running in many instances. It is configurable.

[–] • 1 pt

The printer was automagically configured and a test page has been printed. It only has an IP and a Network (NetBIOS?) name. No servers involved but I'll try net view <IP>.

As for the redirection guard, this is the first I hear of it, so no.

Thanks for the reply, appreciate it.

[–] • 1 pt

If the printer has an IP. I'd work on configuring it as a network printer in W11. open printers, add a printer, properties, ports, add an IP port pointing to the printer.

I assumed you had tried that already.

[–] • 1 pt

I haven't tried anything and I'm all out of ideas :) Good idea, I'll do that tomorrow. I used to do that on all machines for KISS reasons but as far as I can see, it's hooked up via the WSD system, which I never bothered to understand.

[–] • 1 pt (edited )

Thanks for your help! This worked just like a nigger doesn't :)

The Samsung driver that was installed, automatically gobbled up the print jobs and discarded them. I guess because it received unexpected data.

In retrospect, I should have known because that's how it was setup on the W2k machine also. Doh. Ended up using the "Generic/Text only" driver because the software generates the data stream on its own. On the old machine the Laserjet III driver was used, which also worked.

[–] • 1 pt

Just out of curiosity - What the heck is the emulated Atari accomplishing in this setup?

Did you virtualize the Win2k machine or does whatever ancient software it ran actually work in Win11?

[–] • 2 pts (edited )

I understand :) The Atari is acting as a controller for certain measurement devices. It is recording and evaluating results, providing statistical data over the whole sample including Min, Max, Avg, Cp CpK. It also provides good/bad parts sorted into discrete groups according to fault class. It saves parameters and results in CSV format for further evaluation using spreadsheets and provides a concise printed report for archiving.

The user interface is visual during parameter entry and purely audio-feedback driven during the measurement process. It has the highest possible throughput in its class while making no compromises on data accuracy.

The software has probably made more than 500 million measurements and evaluations of individual components in a span of 30+ years while being adapted to multiple generations of Wayne Kerr LCR meters. There were zero customer complaints regarding its results.

Its name is WaynesWorld. The current version is 0.46 or something.

[–] • 1 pt

Re the W2k machine: No virtualization, the emulator runs on Win11. You can still buy it. It's called MagiC PC. Here's a link to the German site (Application Systems Heidelberg): https://www.application-systems.de/atari/produktefuratari.html

The Atari ST line was hugely successful in Germany. Notably in some industrial environments and the music production scene.

The OG machine is a Compaq Pentium III SFF PC. 512 MB of RAM. Good times.

[–] • 1 pt

That's wild. I never knew something like that was in use. I've worked around my fair of industrial machines too.

I think you're on the right track sending the lpt port traffic somewhere else. I've only ever used that when there was a print server in the mix though. I wonder if you could set up the printer in Win11, then share it. Then use the net use command to map it to the locally shared printer. Kinda circular logic but might work.

Similarly maybe try hooking up the printer via USB (if available) and mapping ltp1 to the USB port.

Make sure you're running the net use command in an elevated command prompt (right click, run as administrator). You also might need to create a local admin account and plug that into the net use command to bypass any account restrictions: net use ltp1:\\computer\printer /persistent:yes /user:username password

[–] • 1 pt (edited )

pointed me in the right direction, see below.

Should have been obvious but the day must have been too long... Thank you for the help!

[–] • 1 pt (edited )

Windows: Re-inventing Unix, poorly, since 1985

[–] • 1 pt

After recruiting/poaching Dave Cutler from Digital, they really had something with NT. They slowly threw it all away after Windows 2000/NT 5 (IMO).

[–] • 2 pts

Agree. NT shared a lot from the OS/2 collaboration days and was rock solid. I was an OS/2 guy until it was obvious Warp had been abandoned. It's not about technical innovation anymore in Redmond. It's about control, lock-in, and data harvesting. My work Windows 10 box is such a pitiful regression of kludgery.