New Printer Drivers for WordPerfect 5.1

[Ole Juul]

I just had an idle moment and since my dot matrix printer is on-line and working again, I thought I'd take the time to remeniss about how that was with WP 5.1. It's always handy to just send a file to the printer, even in plain DOS, but it seems to me that a working WordPerfect installation would still be a good backup system in this day and age - despite the fact that I generally use plain text.

Part of the reason i got inspired is that a few months ago I had come across a current (!) WP5.1 site and the tab was still open. It's called New Printer Drivers for WordPerfect 5.1. Not only do they have lots of information for using WP5.1 in this day and age, they also have a link to the Corel FTP directory for a huge number of drivers. I was surprised it is still available.

ftp.corel.com/pub/printdrivers/

That was handy for getting the driver for my Raven PR-2417 which performed admirably. While I was there, I grabbed the PostScript package which will surely cover any future needs if I want to connect to a modern printer. (That's assuming I can coax DOS to connect on a contemporary interface.)

I think there was a thread here recently about WordPerfect, but I don't know how to find it. In any case, I just wanted to make sure this information is easy to find for those who want it.

 

[njroadfan]

When searching for old product datasheets and manuals, I found that a lot of them tended to be in WP5.1 format. I used the Postscript drivers from that site to dump them to a Postscript file and then fed them into Adobe Distiller to create PDFs. No need to coax DOS (or DOS boxes) into printing on a USB printer.

 

[Ole Juul]

When searching for old product datasheets and manuals, I found that a lot of them tended to be in WP5.1 format. I used the Postscript drivers from that site to dump them to a Postscript file and then fed them into Adobe Distiller to create PDFs.

I would think that a printer that takes pdf files also could take ps directly. In any case I've learned my lesson regarding proprietary printer drivers and all I got now is post script - apart from dot matrix, that is.

No need to coax DOS (or DOS boxes) into printing on a USB printer.

I've never gotten USB to work on any of my DOS boxes but networking is simple and very functional. Particularly since mTCP came on-line. Anyway, I was thinking that I could possibly print to a URL like I normally do on my modern machines. Perhaps I'm dreaming! Anybody here want to write an lpd server for DOS?

 

[Jorg]

I just had an idle moment and since my dot matrix printer is on-line and working again, I thought I'd take the time to remeniss about how that was with WP 5.1. It's always handy to just send a file to the printer, even in plain DOS, but it seems to me that a working WordPerfect installation would still be a good backup system in this day and age - despite the fact that I generally use plain text.

Part of the reason i got inspired is that a few months ago I had come across a current (!) WP5.1 site and the tab was still open. It's called New Printer Drivers for WordPerfect 5.1. Not only do they have lots of information for using WP5.1 in this day and age, they also have a link to the Corel FTP directory for a huge number of drivers. I was surprised it is still available.

ftp.corel.com/pub/printdrivers/

That was handy for getting the driver for my Raven PR-2417 which performed admirably. While I was there, I grabbed the PostScript package which will surely cover any future needs if I want to connect to a modern printer. (That's assuming I can coax DOS to connect on a contemporary interface.)

I think there was a thread here recently about WordPerfect, but I don't know how to find it. In any case, I just wanted to make sure this information is easy to find for those who want it.

Fully aware I am replying to an old thread.. but just to make to comment, the ftp server ist still up November 5 2023. And if you read this and it is gone, drop me a pm.