It's getting harder and harder to find a printer that works with our "legacy", or DOS-based, products.  The first, and most important, aspect of any printer selection is that it must accept direct ASCII text straight through the printer port.  Most printers nowadays do that, but some printers are designed exclusively for use with Windows printer drivers, and expect the Windows driver to translate text output and page formatting into a machine language not accessible directly from DOS.  These so-called "Windows-only" or "host-based" printers are completely useless for DOS applications.

Ideally, the printer should understand the PCL ("Printer Control Language") developed by Hewlett-Packard for their HP printers.  Most printers, particularly most laser printers, of all brands speak PCL.  Rent Roll also has a setup that lets you choose printers which speak the Epson printer language ESC/P2, but we have found it increasingly difficult to get ESC/P2 to work with Rent Roll and not all Legacy products support that language, so you really should stick with PCL.

It is preferable for a printer AND the computer to have a parallel (LPT) port.  It is possible to map LPT1 to a , but the method is not always reliable.  NEVER EVER recommend use of an adapter cable that rewires USB to LPT and vice-versa; we have not once seen this work with any combination of printer ports and printers.

Do we recommend specific brands?
No, for several reasons.  First off, just because a printer works in our environment doesn't mean it will work for someone else on their computer with their operating system.  Second, there are thousands of printer models out there; we can't test them all.  Finally, by the time we do test a specific printer model and add it to a list, that printer is obsolete and we have to start all over again.

How can I find a printer that meets all the criteria?
I send customers to a web site that lists printer compatibility with Linux.  I know it sounds strange, but the idea is that if a printer works with Linux, it will work without a special Windows driver and should therefore work with DOS.  The above link actually takes them one step further and only lists printers that use the PCL driver for Linux, so you know right away every printer on the list speaks PCL.  THIS IS NO GUARANTEE THEY WILL WORK.  The HP Laserjet 1200 speaks PCL and in fact will print the first page or two of a report, but long reports printed on this printer under Windows XP have been known to consistently cut off after the first or second page and omit all the other pages.

A Handy Printer Test
RIGHT-click on this printer test link and choose to save the file to your C: drive, in the root directory (just C:\ instead of in some folder). Then get to a DOS command prompt and type CD \ {enter} to get to the plain C:\ prompt, and type this command: COPY/B PRNTEST.001 LPT1 and press {enter}. It should generate a test page with rows of numbers in different font sizes. Call the support line for more information.