Terminal Services Printing and dBase

[RuthlessSith]

We have an old dBase IV application which we want users to access via Terminal Services on a W2K platform. Currently this app is de-centralized at 50 locations and data is emailed to our headoffice. It's becoming more important that management has access to the databases on a daily basis on an ad-hoc basis. The application is compiled using BDC, but we have access to the source code.

The dBase app works fine using Terminal Services. However since dBase wants to print directly to LPT1, and those familiar with Terminal Services know the user's local printer is captured to virtual ports TSxxx.

Does anyone know a way to get dBase to print to TSxxx? Or a way we can map LPT1 to the TSxxx temporary? The TSxxx is always different, so we can't hard-code it.

Any ideas, thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

 

[RuthlessSith]

Following up on my own post...

Has anyone had any success getting dBase IV to print to the Windows spooler ?

Thanks,

James

 

[dbMark]

DOS printing in the Windows NT family is getting harder with every version. Here are some ideas from several forums here at Tek-Tips that you can investigate to see which is most practical or applicable in your case.

BCastner made an excellent post in thread779-868311 where he provided these 3 links:

Start with Bruce Sanderson's advice:

http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/CleanPrinterDrivers.htm

The classic MVP Printer FAQ:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&th=7e4287af9dfad757&rnum=13

A Tek-Tip discussion of note:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?SQID=581142&SPID=779&page=2

If you get lost in the above links, just search for the word DOS to focus on what may be more applicable in your case.

Also, take a look at my prior posts in thread182-718345 telling how to use NET USE and LPT2 (I avoided using LPT1 since it may or may not be used for a local printer) to see if any of those solutions help. See also thread182-836766 just in case.

ALso, there is another way to print from DOS in Windows. Do a search here for PrintFile from Lerup. It's a simple workaround. You print to a directory that you have monitored by the PrintFile program. When it sees a file pop into the directory, it prints it. See thread182-731359, among others. Simple and elegant if only it wasn't a workaround.

dbMark