Need help finding someone to update and old C program that is used in XP

CalvinHobbes

Diamond Member
Feb 27, 2004
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My father-in-law uses a program for his business that was written in C years ago. The program was originally written to run in DOS with a dot matrix printer.

The problem is that he would like to be able to use XP with the program. The program runs fine in XP but when he prints something, it pauses for 60 seconds before starting to print.

He is looking for someone who could modify the code so the program works more smoothly with his printers from a command prompt in XP.
 

EagleKeeper

Discussion Club Moderator<br>Elite Member
Staff member
Oct 30, 2000
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Written for DOS when no drivers were needed vs running in a Windows Cmd Shell which expects drivers could be an issue.

Are the proper drivers installed for the Dot Matrix printer?
 

SunnyD

Belgian Waffler
Jan 2, 2001
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www.neftastic.com
It's likely running slow because in XP the parallel port does not get an interrupt. Hence what's happening is raw calls to the port aren't getting proper hardware time, and are being "buffered" before getting spit out the the parallel port. Working as intended.