gmbeckett
asked on
Print to a computer
I have Dairy Farmer customer who records the milk yields from his cows onto a computer in the parlour that is not a PC and has no floppy drives or keyboard etc. The milk yields are then sent to a printer at the end of milking via a press of a button.
He wishes to put the milk yields into a spreadsheet and at the moment he has to print these out and then input them manully.
Instead of connecting a printer to the parlour computer you could connect a PC via a parrell cable connected to the printer port of the PC. Is there any method then of reading the information sent from the Parlour computer to the PC when the farmer presses trhe print button on the Parlour computer.
He wishes to put the milk yields into a spreadsheet and at the moment he has to print these out and then input them manully.
Instead of connecting a printer to the parlour computer you could connect a PC via a parrell cable connected to the printer port of the PC. Is there any method then of reading the information sent from the Parlour computer to the PC when the farmer presses trhe print button on the Parlour computer.
you could change the printer driver to print to a file instead and the open the file in excel
ASKER
The only problem is that the Parlour computer can only output to a printer. As far as I am aware there is no way of changing it's internal drivers to print to a file and it does not have any floppy drive or indeed a hard drive as it only holds the milk information in memory for a maximum of 5 days.
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Try contacting the milking parlour computer supplier as they may well have dealt with this issue before - it can't be a new requirement.
You would probably be better off asking them for a floppy or CD drive, or even a network connection - anything to let you take the data away from that PC. It will always be easier to get the data that way than to extract it from printer output. Do they have any backup facility? If they do, can another PC access the backup files to get at the data?
gmbeckett
Have you found a solution to your problem yet, or have you accepted the impossibility of it?
Have you found a solution to your problem yet, or have you accepted the impossibility of it?
No comment has been added to this question in more than 21 days, so it is now classified as abandoned..
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Accept hdhondt
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hdhondt
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I will leave a recommendation in the Cleanup topic area that this question is:
Accept hdhondt
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hdhondt
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