USB Connected Printers

Most modern printers now come with a USB port which is actually a lot faster than the old parallel printer ports. Since modern computers can support many USB connected devices you can connect multiple printers to your computer using USB cables with no problems. This is probably the simplest way to connect multiple printers. Some printers also come with a network interface and you can also connect multiple printers by using the network interface which supports up to around 250 different devices on one simple network (devices can be computers, printers, modems etc).

Single Computer Setup

We don't recommend that you install multiple printers onto the one computer using a switch box as you will often forget to flick the switch and hence print the wrong data onto the wrong printer.

If you have only one machine (or you want all printers connected to one machine) you can have a single or dual port printer card fitted to the computer. This means that, in addition to the original LPT1 printer port that comes with the computer, you will now have an LPT2 port (and perhaps even an LPT3 port). Also if the printer port that was supplied with your computer (usually as part of the main motherboard) develops a fault you can disable it and use one of these printer cards instead.

If you do this then, all you need to do is plug each printer into it's own printer port on the back of your computer and tell the Rent Master or Ausbroker or Payroll program which printer to print on for receipts, cheques, payslips etc. You can do this by clicking on the FILE menu and then choosing SETUP PRINTERS.

If you are not sure which printer is plugged into which printer port you can click on the TEST PRINT button and the computer will print the name of the printer port on the printer plugged into each port.

Network Printer Setup

As for a single computer setup we don't recommend that you install multiple printers onto the one computer using a switch box as you will often forget to flick the switch and hence print the wrong data onto the wrong printer.

To set up dot matrix printers to be used as cheque/receipt/payslip printers requires several steps.

  • Physically install the printers onto the computer to which it will be connected
  • Install the windows printer driver for that printer onto the computer it is plugged into
  • "Share" the printers so that other computers can "see" them (see our network setup page)
  • Install the Windows printer drivers for each printer onto the other computers (see our network setup page)
  • Map an MS-DOS printer name (eg LPT2) on the remote computer to link to the shared printer
  • Tell the Rent Master or Ausbroker or Payroll program which printer to print on (See single computer above)
To map an MD-DOS printer name to a remote printer you need to click on START then SETTINGS then PRINTERS then right click on the printer to be mapped and choose PROPERTIES. Then click on the DETAILS tab at the top of the page and you should see a form which looks similar to this form.

Then click on the CAPTURE PRINTER PORT button and map the printer to a device (not LPT1) by entering the path to the remote printer. Make sure that you tick RECONNECT AT LOGON as well. and then click on OK.

Now you can go and tell your program which printer port to print receipts/cheques etc to.