EdvardasR Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 Hi, Last week end I got an interesting/annoying task from my fathers company (It means no budget or anything). They realized that the ancient box (AMD 5x85, 8 megs of ram and a whopping 850 meg hard drive) has some specialized accounting system from a company that is gone now and need the data back. I chose vmware player for them on the desktop (the setup of the virtual machine was done in vmware server2). Everything runs nice and faster then on the old hardware, even on their oldish machines ( Athlon XP 1800+). But there is a small problem with printing. The application is only able to print to parallel port, it would work from what i understand, if they had LPT printer. Is there a way to force vmware server/player to pas data from the virtual lpt port to a printer on USB? Thank you for your time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124003 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdvardasR Posted January 12, 2009 Author Share Posted January 12, 2009 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124003 the problem is that they DO NOT have a LPT printer. and i looked locally for a used one, the prices are lets say not very friendly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 Well, they have two options, buy an extortionate printer or buy software that supports USB printers and spend the man hours moving the data out of the old system. One will be much cheaper and easier than the other. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 Well, they have two options, buy an extortionate printer or buy software that supports USB printers and spend the man hours moving the data out of the old system. One will be much cheaper and easier than the other. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 Can they save the file and copy it to the host system and print from the host system? What format does it save the file in? I'm sure there is a logical way to get around this issue. You said you are using the VM Player, but I can't remember if it lets you share files between the host and virtual OS. In VMware Workstation, you can share files between the host and virtual OS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 Go buy a used laserjet with a lpt port on the back of it. Then seriously impress upon them the need to update as the longer they leave it, the higher the cost of porting it to something made this decade. If they don't, eventually they will loose everything on the system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 Does the desktop even have an LPT port(I assume you mean Parralell Port). My current desktop only has USB. No parralell port, and no serial ports. In VMware Workstation you can add a Parralell Port that outputs to a file from the Virtual OS. So when you go to print, it sends it to the host system as a text file. You could then print it on any attached printer from the host system. I'm not sure if VMware tools needs to be installed on the virtual machine for this to work though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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