mikek@col.hp.com (Mike Karin) (05/25/90)
My wife's office has several PC's linked together with a program called MANYLINK to do printer sharing. Recently, they have been having problems with MANYLINK when large print jobs are sent to the machine with the printer on it while that machine is running a PARADOX application. In the above case, the machine serving the printer (and running PARADOX) just locks up. I would like some suggestions for *inexpensive* alternate solutions to printer sharing. The printer that they want to share is a Laserjet II. I know that they could spend lots of money and put in a LAN system but I would like to know if there are solutions available that *just* do printer sharing and nothing else. Mike Karin Hewlett-Packard Co Colorado Springs Division mikek@hp-col.col.hp.com
wdh1@ra.MsState.Edu (William D. Henry) (05/26/90)
In article <16110002@col.hp.com> mikek@col.hp.com (Mike Karin) writes: >I would like some suggestions for *inexpensive* alternate solutions to >printer sharing. The printer that they want to share is a Laserjet II. > >I know that they could spend lots of money and put in a LAN system but I >would like to know if there are solutions available that *just* do printer >sharing and nothing else. To just do printer sharing, you could consider purchasing an automated switchbox. Although you did not say how the computers were connected, I assume they do have some sort of cables running between them. An sutomated switchbox would allow many different computers to be connected to one or more printers and could allow for queueing (sp?) jobs as well. The drawback might be that all the computers that need access to the printer would have to be physically connected to the switchbox by printer cables. An example: Dartek offers a Parallel Auto-Scan Switchbox that connects seven different computers to one printer. When one computer sends a print job, the other computers are locked out until the first computer finishes. There are other more complex boxes that offer large print buffers and queues, as well. (The one mentioned above is $290 in a fairly old catalog.) Hope this helps! -Bill P.S. I have no affiliation with Dartek, except as a pleased customer. ____ | \ | | Bill Henry - wdh1@ra.msstate.edu | / . | | Mississippi State University |----\ | | University Honors Program | ) | | | |____/ | | | Live long and prosper.
rreiner@yunexus.UUCP (Richard Reiner) (05/26/90)
mikek@col.hp.com (Mike Karin) writes: >I would like some suggestions for *inexpensive* alternate solutions to >printer sharing. The printer that they want to share is a Laserjet II. Try an rs-232 ("Zero-slot") software LAN. The best one by far (and I've tried them all) is The $25 Network from Information Modes in Texas. It lets you share devices, including printers, between two or more PCs using a serial link at 115 Kbps. The resident code is only about 10 Kb (plus or minus a few Kb depending on your configuration). It's completely transparent, and has been totally reliable. See the ads in the back of the glossy PC magazines. >I know that they could spend lots of money and put in a LAN system but I >would like to know if there are solutions available that *just* do printer >sharing and nothing else. The $25 Network also lets you share disks and other character devices; it also provides limited remote-control capabilities. I'm not affiliated with Information Modes other than as a very satisfied customer. --richard