Help setting up Printer in DOS?

I am new to the forum so I thought I would start with a really odd question. Let me give you a little background.

My father-in-law has an old computer program that he uses for his finances and it is DOS based. It was created by some guy that he used to work with but no longer has contact with. Well this program worked fine until we installed a new printer that instead of using the COM1 port, uses a USB port. Well this program has a print file that has hard coded in the COM1 port and I am trying to figure out how to direct it to the USB port. Here is the code in the program

ECHO Setting the serial (RS232) port to:
\DOS\MODE COM1:2400,N,8,1

I tried changing the COM1 to USB001 but it just hangs up. The printer that I am trying to set up is an HP 1300C. If you experts could give me any help that would be appreciated. Oh by the way, I told him years ago that the program was way out of date.

Thanks in advance.

Mux

 

Hi, and welcome to MajorGeeks.
I definitely can't help with the coding part, but someone that can will probably be around before long. They do make serial to usb converters, ( I've never used one ) and that may be your simplest and quickest fix.

 

Thanks for the welcome. I have used this site in the past but have never needed as much help as I do today. Thanks

Mux

 

Mux,
Glad to see that you posted in the Programming section also, but sad to see that they verified what I thought. DOS doesn't have native support for USB. You shouldn't have any problem finding a serial to USB converter at your local BestBuy, Office Depo, Office Max, etc.
Another thought that may be worth a try is saving the DOS file, and opening it with notepad, as it seems to do well with text files. If notepad will open it, then you should be able to print it through Windows.

 

Novice is probably right, a Serial to USB converter would be your simplest solution.

Also, I know it doesn't quite fix the problem, but I'd suggest upgrading to something a little more up to date. The longer you go trying to use this old DOS software, the more headaches you might run into.

 

Serial to USB may be the best way to go. You could also try picking up a second-hand serial printer. Epson was a good choice. Check out the DOS program to see what printers it supports. Most old DOS programs support a lot of different EPSON printers. Bazza

===