jes@mbio.med.upenn.edu (Joe Smith) (07/28/90)
We have a PC which isn't connected to any printer (either parallel or serial). Of course, every time some unsuspecting user accidently hits ^P, the poor PC is hung as DOS tries in vain to slave the printer, and the poor confused user comes running to me for help. Does anyone know how to kill (with extreme prejudice) this 'feature'? I generally shy away from patching binaries, but I'm willing to make an exception here if necessary. Do the PD printer->file TSRs/drivers handle this? If so can you recommend one? This might actually be the most desirable solution since we do all the printing remotely by tcp/ip so we frequently need to capture printer output. Does anyone know why this mis-feature/vestigial tail still exists? <Joe -- Joe Smith University of Pennsylvania jes@mbio.med.upenn.edu Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics (215) 898-8348 Philadelphia, PA 19104-6059
leonard@qiclab.uucp (Leonard Erickson) (07/30/90)
Here's a quick *hardware* solution to the "no printer hang". Get a male DB-25 connector. Insulation displacement type works well for this. Run a piece of hookup wire from pin 1 to pin 10. Snap on the back of the connector. Now plug it into the printer port. You now have the worlds fastest printer. :-) In case you are curious, what you've just done is connect the STROBE line to the READY line. So as soon as the computer asserts STROBE [data ready for printer] it gets READY [printer ready for more data] We've had to use this to get a few machines to be able to rediirect PrtScr to a network printer. -- Leonard Erickson ...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard CIS: [70465,203] "Oregon Guild Gold Card -- don't leave home without it!"