Everhart, Glenn
From:	mathog@seqaxp.bio.caltech.edu
Sent:	Thursday, February 18, 1999 11:32 AM
To:	Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com
Subject:	print queues to Win95/98/NT connected printers
With more and more PCs around here I'm starting to get requests to
print from our VMS machine directly to Win95/98/NT printers.  Most
of these printers don't have IP addresses - they hang off the parallel
port on somebody's PC.  So far, the only (free) way I've found to get a 
print job from VMS through one of these printers is to funnel it through
SMBCLIENT (from Samba), here's an example: 

$! my own port of this version, based on the earlier VMS port.  This
$! one has password encryption (I think!)
$ sss :== $DKB0:[SAMBA.SAMBA-1_9_19.SOURCE]SMBCLIENT.EXE
$! find the printers that are on it
$ sss  "-L" wnt_machine_name "-U" wnt_user_name
wnt_user's password

        Sharename      Type      Comment
        ---------      ----      -------
        ADMIN$         Disk      Remote Admin
        C$             Disk      Default share
        dropfolder     Disk      drop folder for wnt_machine_name
        F$             Disk
        IPC$           IPC       Remote IPC
        print$         Disk      Printer Drivers
        QMSmagic       Printer   QMS magicolor 2 CX
        SAF LPS17      Printer   Digital PrintServer 17/600
$! make a postscript file if it isn't already in that format
$ convert/document somefile.txt/form=ascii somefile.ps/form=ps
$! attach to one of those printers
$ sss  "\\wnt_machine_name\SAF LPS17" "-U" wnt_user_name "-P"
wnt_user's password
print somefile.ps
exit
$!

And the print job comes out on the named printer.  Now I can easily
enough modify SMBCLIENT so that both the password and the job to print
can go on the command line, which will reduce this, for a postscript
only queue, to just

$ sss  "\\wnt_machine_name\SAF LPS17" -
  "-P" 
  "-U" wnt_user_name -
  "-password" wnt_users_password
  "-file" somefile.ps

What would I then need to do to make this into a print queue?

The only other way that I know of to do this is to turn on LPD on one of
our NT machines, and do VMS LPR-> WNT LPD -> Target Windows printer.  But
that's both indirect and requires mucking around in the registry to make
those printer shares "Null Shares". 

Is there a better alternative (but also free) for talking to these printers?

Thanks,


David Mathog
mathog@seqaxp.bio.caltech.edu
Manager, sequence analysis facility, biology division, Caltech 
**************************************************************************
*                                RIP VMS                                 *
**************************************************************************