You are not going wrong. It is HP that is going wrong. There is no good reason why JetDirect boxes/cards and PCL printers are necessary. In fact, as Joshua Johnson noted 4/30/98: <--snip--> There is an undocumented feature of 5.5 printing that I was able to find out about because I use network printing to print to a Laserjet printer through an Intel NETXPORT print server box. Here is what you do: In the NPCONFIG.PUB.SYS file add this line to the dev that you want to turn off snmp to. snmp_enabled=FALSE example: 3000 (network_address=???.???.???.??? TCP_port_number=3001 snmp_enabled=FALSE) <--snip--> I can add a little bit to Joshua's tip: If you have a NETXPORT box with one serial port and two parallel ports, the port number for the serial port is 2501 and the parallel ports are 3001 and 3002. Works fine for us. We too would like to use non-PCL printers; however, as far as the PCL requirement is concerned, I do not know of any (even undocumented) way to overcome this. Which is just plain abstinence on HP's part because all the spooler does is send some very short pcl string at the beginning and an equally short pcl string at the end of each spool file. [Old-timers will recall that until the early '80s you could only spool "HP" printers serially off an HP3000. Deja vu anyone?] And, before anyone jumps all over me, yes there are several good third party packages that will let you print through and to just about anything (and you will probably hear from most of the vendors). We have one. But, none of them can be as neat and clean as MPE network printing because they have to be bolted on rather than integrated into the spooler. John Burke e-mail: [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: David Randall [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 1998 12:10 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: TCP printing to non HP devices I just know some of you luminaries will know the answer to this one... We have remote site with a network link (TCP/IP) and a need to supply them with a spooled device from our 957 running MPE/iX 5.5 Express 4. We initially purchased an Intel print server with a serial port (we had a serial printer we wanted to use) but it would not play. HP advised that it was down to the SNMP implementation on the device not returning a value for a particular variable - you had to use an HP Jetdirect box. So now we are trying an HP Jet Direct box with an old Epson impact printer... it will not play - HP now say PCL only we have confirmed all is ok on a Deskjet 820 and a RuggedWriter but nothing else. Can someone out there give me some pointers or references to where we are going wrong - my multi vendor cheap and cheerful solution has become single vendor potentially pricey solution, Thanks in advance. -- David Randall, IT Manager, Healthcall Services Limited 401 South Row, Milton Keynes, Bucks.. MK9 2PH http:\\www.healthcall.co.uk Voice +1908 691919 Fax : +1908 690169 <mailto:\\[log in to unmask]>