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From: wdh1@ra.MsState.Edu (William D. Henry)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Alternatives for Printer Sharing?
Message-ID: <464@ra.MsState.Edu>
Date: 25 May 90 20:40:09 GMT
References: <16110002@col.hp.com>
Organization: Mississippi State University
Lines: 35


In article <16110002@col.hp.com> mikek@col.hp.com (Mike Karin) writes:
>I would like some suggestions for *inexpensive* alternate solutions to 
>printer sharing.  The printer that they want to share is a Laserjet II.
>
>I know that they could spend lots of money and put in a LAN system but I
>would like to know if there are solutions available that *just* do printer
>sharing and nothing else.

To just do printer sharing, you could consider purchasing an automated 
switchbox.  Although you did not say how the computers were connected, I assume
they do have some sort of cables running between them.  An sutomated
switchbox would allow many different computers to be connected to one
or more printers and could allow for queueing (sp?) jobs as well.
The drawback might be that all the computers that need access to the
printer would have to be physically connected to the switchbox by printer
cables.  An example:  Dartek offers a Parallel Auto-Scan Switchbox 
that connects seven different computers to one printer.  When one computer
sends a print job, the other computers are locked out until the first
computer finishes.  There are other more complex boxes that offer large
print buffers and queues, as well. (The one mentioned above is $290 in a
fairly old catalog.)

Hope this helps!

-Bill

P.S.  I have no affiliation with Dartek, except as a pleased customer.

____
|    \      |  |      Bill Henry  -  wdh1@ra.msstate.edu
|    /   .  |  |      Mississippi State University
|----\      |  |      University Honors Program
|     )  |  |  |
|____/   |  |  |      Live long and prosper.