Drag-n-drop XP printing

[Jim]

This seems like such a simple question that I'm embarrased to ask. I've googled around and can't seem to find an answer.

I do a lot of assembly language programming, and I do it in a dos box and use Wordstar (non-document mode) as my editor. I've done it this way for 10 years and I'm not about to change. The problem is printing my program. Since my system uses a printserver, I haven't been sucessful at printing within dos to the server. I can print to the LPT port, but I need that for my FPGA programmer. But in a nutshell, all of this doesn't really matter. What I want to do is go to windows explorer, and drag my text file over to the network printer and have it printed out with no formatting or mucking around. What I have to do now is open my text file with Notepad (which messes up the tabs) and print from there.

Anyone got any answers?

[Bluzeman]

Are you running in a dos box under xp? If so, try the following:

net use lpt1: \\printserver\sharename /persistent:yes

It's the same syntax as mounting a network drive Then set WordStar to print to the printer on that port.

Of course, the easier way would be to save your doc as a plain text file and print it with notepad, but that would ruin any formatting you have.

Rick

[Jim]

Thanks Rick. I wasn't really looking for that approach since I use these silly little Netgear printserver boxes and I didn't think they could be accessed as real printservers. I had tried various NET USE commands trying to access them and had made no progress. It turns out that the Netgear website had just the command for routing LPT1 to a port on one of the printserver and it worked.

[ChasUFarley]

I knew Bluezman was gonna come to the rescue! WHOO-HOO!