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Understanding the Print Assistant

The Print Assistant application (Print Assistant) lets you configure your workstation so you can print on printers connected to the network or to other computers on your network as if they were attached directly to your workstation.

Two terms that are important to understand are print server and print queue. A print server is a computer on your network that handles print requests for attached printers. A print queue is a mechanism that computers use to send print requests to printers in an orderly fashion and to prevent simultaneous print requests from interleaving.

Printers are frequently identified by their queue names; for example, if you send a print job to the SYSTEM printer, it is likely that it is actually the SYSTEM queue.

Print servers can support multiple print queues.

Printing Files

To use Print Assistant, you first need to set up your workstation so that it knows which print servers, protocols, and printers (or print queues) to use. You can get this information from your network administrator. You then need to map your workstation's parallel ports (LPT devices) to the printers you want to use.

Once you have set up your workstation for remote printing, the Print Assistant sends the information to the print server or printer using the appropriate protocol. Print servers can support more than one protocol at a time.

The Print Assistant supports the following protocols:

Starting Print Assistant

To open the Print Assistant window, either choose the Network Connections... option from the Printer menu in the Print Manager or double-click the Print Assistant icon in the Cisco Suite 100 group.

The Windows 3.x Print Assistant window appears.

The Cisco TCP/IP Suite Print Assistant window contains three tab dialog boxes:

If you have not added servers to the Print Assistant, the Servers tab appears first. Once you have added servers, the Connections tab appears.

The Print Assistant window may or may not contain an OtherNet button. If your workstation uses additional network file systems, the name of the other network file system appears on this button. Click this button to access other network file systems that your workstation uses.

To close the Print Assistant window, click the Close button in any tab.

Print Assistant Procedural Overview

To set up your workstation so that you can print using the Print Assistant:

  1. Collect the following information from your network administrator:
  2. Install the necessary print drivers on your workstation through the Printers dialog box in the Control Panel, and assign them to the desired parallel ports. If you need assistance, refer to Windows or Windows for Workgroups printed documentation or online help.
  3. Add each print server to the Servers list.
  4. Associate a parallel port to the desired printer and connect to it.
  5. If desired, set Print Assistant global options.

The following sections describe these activities in more detail.



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