TopDoc.... an Oldie for sure

Steve Bailey said:

If you use a fixed-width font like Courier the addresses should line up properly with the instructions.

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the text formatting ended up being OK. just needed to remove the bad characters and throw in Box drawing characters like they originally used. Not sure what the old windows ascii format was that throws off the characters so much from the original Alt codes.

IanM8040 said:

any chance you can get the PRN for the J100965 also?

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J100965.prn attached

Slightly off topic, but I had a similar issue where SLC Logistics, would only print to "real" printers. I found a little utility called "LPT Capture" that captures the output to the PC's physical parallel port and dumps it into a plain text file.


I can't find that utility on the web, but here's one that looks like it does something similar and is maybe even more capable:
https://www.printfil.com/manualen/c7.htm


I can try to share the executable of the old one I have, but I'm not sure about licensing or copyrights. There isn't a readme or help file that I can find any more.

joseph_e2 said:

Slightly off topic, but I had a similar issue where SLC Logistics, would only print to "real" printers. I found a little utility called "LPT Capture" that captures the output to the PC's physical parallel port and dumps it into a plain text file.


I can't find that utility on the web, but here's one that looks like it does something similar and is maybe even more capable:
https://www.printfil.com/manualen/c7.htm


I can try to share the executable of the old one I have, but I'm not sure about licensing or copyrights. There isn't a readme or help file that I can find any more.

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This is pretty good stuff here. DosBox also has the ability to virtualize and print out of an LPT port.

Newer virtualizing tech has been extremely handy in dealing with old equipment. an SLC150 that required specific software (PCIS) and a newer USB to serial driver (like the one sold by geniusintraining) is a tricky one since you obviously will have a hard time running a usb device that isn't built for win98 and below. luckily you can just run a usb device on a main machine using windows 10 or anything, pass it straight through to a VM (even works with windows 3.11 vm) and use old software through a usb conversion.

IanM8040 said:

This is pretty good stuff here. DosBox also has the ability to virtualize and print out of an LPT port.

Newer virtualizing tech has been extremely handy in dealing with old equipment. an SLC150 that required specific software (PCIS) and a newer USB to serial driver (like the one sold by geniusintraining) is a tricky one since you obviously will have a hard time running a usb device that isn't built for win98 and below. luckily you can just run a usb device on a main machine using windows 10 or anything, pass it straight through to a VM (even works with windows 3.11 vm) and use old software through a usb conversion.

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That's what we did with our SLC 150s! We had Windows XP VMs that ran SLC Logistics and used geniusintraining's adapter connected to the VM. The only tricky bit was that we had to periodically reset the adapter's COM port in Device Manager because SLC Logistics could only see up to like COM 3 or something and WinXP would sometimes assign the adapter a higher number. Other than that, we had no issues.


The PLC2s on the other hand....UP/DOC was by Excel Automation and used their proprietary adapter that only worked with a native COM port (we tried several adapters, even docking stations). We ended up going to e-bay for several old Dell laptops running XP that had built-in COM ports.

KuulKuum said:

J100965.prn attached

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I have printed prn files to PDF with dosprn software. Prn files I have printed from Dosbox megabuild. (As it has prn printing possibly)

Purchased license for dosprn maybe some 5-8years ago.
Dosbox megabuild is allready obsolute, buth dosprn have still webpage.

KuulKuum said:

J100965.prn attached

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PDF conversions from PRN files

Lare said:

PDF conversions from PRN files

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Hey those are awesome Lare. Much appreciated!

Another dinosaur of a system saved without needing to do a complete overhaul of existing programming.