Old Printer Driver Help Needed

[The Litwaks]

For many years, long since we had a PC XT with the "generous" 20M hard
drive, we have had an IBM Proprinter XL, a wide-carriage dot-matrix
printer. My wife has kept this printer for these many years because she
sews, and kept waiting for a pattern-making program because, since
patterns are much wider than a typical piece of typing paper, this
printer would be the best choice. The problem is that the driver that
Windows XP comes with that is purportedly for this printer doesn't work
properly. ALl my searches on the Internet for a better driver lead back
to the XP driver. For example, I found a company through Google that
mentions a driver for this printer, but they point you to IBM. IBM
points you to Lexmark. Lexmark says they don't support it anymore and
you should just use the XP driver. However, the XP driver can't even
tell correctly when there is paper in the printer.

Can anyone suggest a solution to getting a driver specific to an
IBM Proprinter XL (a wide-carriage, dot-matrix printer) that will work
on XP? Do you suppose that the driver that comes with Win 98 would work
better? (I have a laptop that has Win 98 on it.) I've spent a lot of
Google time searching for a solution and not found one. I downloaded a
driver that claimed it would do the job, but it didn't. I know I'm
trying to make an old printer work on new software, but should it be
that hard to get a useful driver for a simpler printer than any new
printers? Thanks for any suggestions. I'm afraid my programming
knowledge does not extend to drivers, which is a pretty specialized
area. Thanks.

Ken

 

[Peter Foldes]

Maybe? It says Proprinter XL driver

http://downloads.lexmark.com/cgi-perl/downloads.cgi?ccs=229:1:0:232:0:0&emeaframe=&fileID=993
The following link will take you to other compatible drivers
http://support.lexmark.com/cgi-perl/knowledgebase.cgi?ccs=229:1:0:232:0:0&emeaframe=&docid=ENUS15396

 

[Malke]

For many years, long since we had a PC XT with the "generous" 20M
hard
drive, we have had an IBM Proprinter XL, a wide-carriage dot-matrix
printer. My wife has kept this printer for these many years because
she sews, and kept waiting for a pattern-making program because, since
patterns are much wider than a typical piece of typing paper, this
printer would be the best choice. The problem is that the driver that
Windows XP comes with that is purportedly for this printer doesn't
work
properly. ALl my searches on the Internet for a better driver lead
back
to the XP driver. For example, I found a company through Google that
mentions a driver for this printer, but they point you to IBM. IBM
points you to Lexmark. Lexmark says they don't support it anymore and
you should just use the XP driver. However, the XP driver can't even
tell correctly when there is paper in the printer.

Can anyone suggest a solution to getting a driver specific to an
IBM Proprinter XL (a wide-carriage, dot-matrix printer) that will work
on XP? Do you suppose that the driver that comes with Win 98 would
work
better? (I have a laptop that has Win 98 on it.) I've spent a lot of
Google time searching for a solution and not found one. I downloaded
a
driver that claimed it would do the job, but it didn't. I know I'm
trying to make an old printer work on new software, but should it be
that hard to get a useful driver for a simpler printer than any new
printers? Thanks for any suggestions. I'm afraid my programming
knowledge does not extend to drivers, which is a pretty specialized
area. Thanks.

I'm afraid you already know the answer, Ken. This printer just isn't
going to work properly under XP. I have two suggestions:

1. Keep an old computer around running Win98 and use the printer there.
If you don't connect that computer to the Internet, there is no reason
why you can't run an older operating system on it so your wife can make
her patterns with no hassle.

2. If you don't want another computer (and you can get an older one
really cheaply now), look into running Virtual PC 2004 on the XP box.
This software allows you to create virtual machines running different
operating systems. You could make a Win98 virtual machine and try
installing the printer on it.

Malke

 

[Plato]

For many years, long since we had a PC XT with the "generous" 20M hard
drive, we have had an IBM Proprinter XL, a wide-carriage dot-matrix
printer. My wife has kept this printer for these many years because she
sews, and kept waiting for a pattern-making program because, since
patterns are much wider than a typical piece of typing paper, this
printer would be the best choice. The problem is that the driver that

Then use the os and drivers for that printer that have worked before. So
what if you need to keep an older pc around just for that. No problem.

 

[The Litwaks]

Thanks for the suggestions, Peter, but the first link takes me to a
driver for OS/2. I'd seen that before, but I haven't had a copy of OS/2
on a computer for about ten years.

Ken

 

[Peter Foldes]

And the 2nd link takes you replacement drivers from Epson