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Remote Ticket Printing-Parallel

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Things you will need:

  • A Printer with a parallel connection
  • A windows based computer with XP or later.
  • A real parallel port on your remote computer or laptop (it can be via a PCMCIA add on card if need be
  • Windows Terminal Server 2003 or later in your computer room.
  • A connection to the internet at the remote box office.

Try the setup in your office to make sure it works before going to the remote location.

This will only work if you DO NOT install a local printer driver on the computer at the remote box office or on the terminal server and assign it to LPT1.

Setup:

The setup assumes that the printer will be connected to LPT1. If you are using LPT2 or another port, substitute it for all instructions below.

  1. Remove any printer driver you may have installed on the computer at the remote location that is attached to LPT1.
  2. Set up a remote desktop connection to the terminal server
  3. In the options for the RDC connection, make sure you share the PORTS in the local resources.
  4. Make the connection via RDC to the terminal server (must be terminal server 2003 or greater
  5. Log into Theatre Manager
  6. Go to the preferences for the user and click ticket printer -- and make sure LPT1 is selected as the ticket printer
  7. Test print a ticket.

Troubleshooting

If you are running into issues, have a look at one or more of the following:

  • Make sure you DO NOT have a printer set up for LPT on the remote machine. In fact, remove all printers that you are able to remote
  • DO NOT allow windows to automatically install a printer driver for you when it discovers the parallel ticket printer
  • Restart the remote computer and make sure that the ticket printer rolls a ticket forward and backward on startup
  • Make sure that there is a real parallel port in the device. (it can be a PCMCIA printer device. A USB to parallel device is not a real parallel port.
  • Make sure that your setup for Remote Desktop is set to share the local ports.
  • Make sure that your terminal server allows local ports to be shared from the remove device.
  • Make sure that the printer has tickets in it
  • Make sure that the clutch is down inside the printer so that the rollers can engage the printer
  • Watch to see if the ticket printer receives any data when you click 'test print' in theatre manager. One of the lights will flash
  • If it will not work on one machine, try another machine in your office. It make just be the machine.
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