Virtual Printer port

[bannanafanatic]

My first post on these forums..."hi"

Any how... I'm hoping somebody can help me.
I have some old legacy software that our techs have to use in the field on there laptops...The software only works on systems with printer ports. However our techs are needing new laptops and its proving difficult to find new laptops fast enough and durable enough to take abuse in the field and run our other software while having a printer port.
Im looking for software/anything that will install a legit virtual LPT port so we can trick our software.

I hope I have been informative enough to outline the problem enough for a solution.

Thank you
Casey Jones

 

[Harvey]

Welcome to AT. :wine: Google is your friend.

This link is for "USB to LPT" (in quotes). Using the quotes searches for entire text string as the search item. Try a few more similar strings, and you'll probably find what you need.

 

[bannanafanatic]

Thanks for the links!
While these do work I am hoping for software based solutions as any device attached externally to a laptop degrades portability and our "techs" are not technical personnel I do not want them having anything they can take off. I do appreciate your quick response
Thanks
Casey

 

[Harvey]

I didn't search further for your solutions because you didn't say what OS you're using, but you're going to need some kind of hardware just to deal with the two different connector types. Any required electronics should be built into the adapter.

 

[bannanafanatic]

Oh I do apologize.

The laptops are running WindowsXP.
What I am shooting for here is a "LPT1" driver to show up in the device manager when in reality I have no physical port. The physical port is not needed in the slightest, for some reason when the software was designed for systems that had to have a printer port. Even our laptops with printer ports never have anything connected to them.
Thanks for your help.
Casey

 

[Harvey]

You can probably configure your printer setting as a generic printer and set it to print to a file, but I'm not sure exactly how to do that in XP. Here's a link about doing it in Win 2K which is probably the same or similar.

I found it by searching Google for "print to a file". More links from that search.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If nothing else, you might be able to utilize some of the various software utilities for network-based printing, and then have them connect back to itself on localhost (127.0.0.1), such that it appears to have a network-based printer attached, and that it is mapped as LPT1.

Depending on the makup of this "legacy software", though, it might be just as easy to pay your friendly neighborhood cracker, to disassemble and patch the app to remove that lpt-port check in the first place. Finding one of those sorts of people is up to you though.