It's because QuickBasic is a DOS program and outputs to the printer with characters in ASCII. Printers then used their inbuilt fonts to print out in alpha/numerics. Most (all?) modern printers contain no character fonts - they only handle graphics streams.

I had the same problem running Quickbasic programs under Windows XP. I overcame the problem by using an excellent  program called 'DOSprn' that does the translation.

You can get a free download of DOSprn. Just Google for it.

You can also connect lpt1 etc. with the use of a net share

In a dos box type in     net use ?

This will show you how to set up a printer depending on you circumstances.  This will allow you to print to any printer on your network.

David Paulson

I have a similar question.

I have an old ms-dos program that connects to another
computer in pcterm terminal emulation. The trouble is,
my modem is a pci as com3 but not the traditional com3
location or interrupt that ms-dos would expect.

Is there a net use command syntax that I could use to
"fool" the program to use say com2 instead and make it
think it was accessing the modem at the 2f8 location when it's really accessing it at FF8F0000 and interrupt 18 ?

I guess not. I see that net use is for disk drives and LPT
ports. That's all I can see that it's used for.

queANDvisual,

If format is not all that important and you have a default printer then you can try something like this:


--MiggyD

--> It's a bird!  It's a plane!  No, it's an OS update patch! Ahh!! <--