Printing from the PC Card

There are several areas where problems with printing can occur which include printing from DOS, Windows and using a turbodriver.

Printing from Windows 3.1

This is probably the easiest option as virtually every printer made in the last few years will have been supplied with a disc containing a windows printer driver that has been optimised for that particular printer. This means that it is normally just a case of running the installation software. It is common to be able to obtain the latest versions of the driver software from FTP sites.

Printing from DOS

This is a rather more awkward situation as each application includes its own printer driver software and so if you are using old software with a new printer then you are likely not to find it listed in the supported printers. You may find that a DOS driver was supplied with the printer for many of the popular PC packages but otherwise it is a case of either using the driver for an earlier version of the printer or experimenting to find one which works.

Printing using the Turbo Drivers

Due to the hardware protection used by Computer Concepts, the printer cable used with the Turbo Drivers is not a standard one and thus will produce garbage unless PrintQFS is ran. This is normally buried in the !boot application (mine is located in !Boot.Resources.!System.!CCShared). I run PrintQFS as part of my boot sequence, having done so by adding an obey file to the directory !Boot.Choices.Tasks. This consists of the two lines below:

rmload adfs::harddisc4.$.!boot.resources.!system.!ccshared.rmstore.ccsquash
run adfs::harddisc4.$.!boot.resources.!system.!ccshared.!printqfs.!run

They will need editing to point to your version of PrintQFS. Once you have done this the PrintQFS window will open every time you reboot (which I find annoying) but you can dissable this by typing the command 'PQFSSaveWindows' at a command line prompt.

Having done this you will find that it is possible to print from windows but it is almost unusable as it is very slow, which is the penalty of the protection mechanism where the legitimate user is penalised. A way to avoid the long waits is to use the PC printer driver to print to a file, freeze the PC card and then to drag the printer file to the Risc OS printer driver which will print it out at an acceptable speed.