Joe,

First you will need to determine how Windows assigned the USB printer
port.  What is the port setting under Start - Settings - Printers - and the
properties of the printer?  Probably the port has been set to LPT3 or
above.  Many older DOS based programs limited printing options to LPT1 or
LPT2.

If you can get it to print to a file (as you indicated you could in your
post), you should be able to copy the *.prn file to the LPTx port in a DOS
window and the file will print.

First determine the LPT port number as described above and open a DOS
window.  At the prompt issue the command:

copy c:\(path to your file\(your file name).prn LPTx
[where "x" is the LPT port number]

When the file is printed you can close the DOS window.

If you have any more questions, let us know.

Doug


At 5/2/01 08:50 PM, Joe Trimarchi wrote:

>I'm using an old dos based program that prints to LPT1: or LPT2: The program
>is a database manager and was custom written many years ago. The source code
>is no longer available nor is the programmer who wrote it. I'm running
>Win98SE using a Lexmark Z51 Printer connected to a USB Hub.
>I cannot figure any way to get this program to print directly to this
>printer. The program will output reports to a *.PRN file but I can't figure
>out how to get that to print either. I can open the *.PRN files in Excel and
>then print but this takes a lot of removing of control characters and column

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