VirtualBox printing from a DOS virtual machine

Printing from a plain DOS virtual machine in VirtualBox

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Facebook Video showing how to make VirtualBox printing from DOS virtual machines

Printing from DOS programs to Windows printers is pretty easy if you have an old Windows version running on a VirtualBox virtual machine.
Problems come if you have a plain DOS virtual machine installed on VirtualBox.

This video shows how to redirect the LPT1: port on the DOS VirtualBox machine and send the DOS prints to any installed Windows printer.

Preparation:

VirtualBox settings
Redirect COM1 to a Raw File
Setup Printfil to check for that file

Let's go:

Start the DOS virtual machine
Mode LPT1: = COM1:

That's all. Now:

Print from a DOS program to LPT1:
Close everything
Printfil captures the DOS print

WARNING: The "Close Everything" above is needed because VirtualBox keeps the temporary file opened forever rather than opening/closing it just when the port receives data, so, Printfil doesn't start until VirtualBox is closed, and we couldn't find a solution for this problem (that happens only when the guest machine is plain DOS, not Windows 32-bit) on the Sun/Oracle website so far.

If this is a big problem for you, rather than using a DOS virtual machine, you may use a DOS emulator in the host machine (even if it's 64-bit).

If you've questions, you can comment the Facebook video or the YouTube one in this page, or you can contact us at https://www.printfil.com/esupp.htm

Other articles and videos about DOS printing in Windows