The point of having a heterogeneous computing environment is to tap into the unique strengths of several different platforms to set up a specific application. One of the more common AS/400 cross-system applications is the use of Client Access/400 to print AS/400 reports from a Windows 95 workstation across a LAN to an IntraNetWare printer. While this is not extremely difficult, there are a few twists and turns in the road that can throw you for a loop. But—if you have the proper road map—printing AS/400 output to an IntraNetWare printer from your Windows 95 system can be incredibly easy and even somewhat routine.
In this article, I explain how to use the Windows 95/NT client to create an AS/400 printer that directs printouts to a Novell IntraNetWare output queue. In this real-life situation, I’ll take you step-by-step through the configuration process, showing you the ins and outs of this common task.
Step 0—The Assumptions
Before you can create an AS/400-to-IntraNetWare printer through Client Access/400, you need to have a number of things in place. For the purposes of this article, I’ll make the following assumptions:
• That you have a Windows 95 PC properly configured with a Novell IntraNetWare client and that your user can sign on to IntraNetWare from the Windows 95 desktop
• That your Windows 95 PC is already communicating with your target AS/400 and is properly configured for AS/400 communications. This link can be set up through a number of connection techniques, including Synchronous Data Link Control (SDLC) and NetWare for SAA.
• That you have a specific Novell-based printer on your network that you can direct output Windows 95 desktop output to
• That you’re using Client Access for Windows 95/NT (version 3R1M2) With these pieces in place, it is a simple matter to use IBM’s PC5250 software to create a Windows 95 session that can redirect AS/400 reports to a Novell printer. It’s all done in four simple steps.
Step 1—Create Your Windows 95 Printer
Before you can print AS/400 reports to your IntraNetWare server, you need to create a Windows 95 IntraNetWare-capable printer on your workstation. You do this the same way you add any other printer to the Windows 95 desktop—by using the Add Printer Wizard program.
You access the Add Printer Wizard tool by opening the Windows 95 Printer folder. Start up the Printer folder by selecting the Windows 95 Start button, and then choose Settings and Printers. Once inside, click on the Add Printer icon. Be sure you have your Windows 95 installation media (CD or diskette) or your printer diskettes handy to load device drivers for your printer.
Follow the prompts to add your printer. When Windows 95 asks you whether your printer is attached locally or through a network, select Network printer as shown in Figure
1. Windows 95 will then prompt you for the Novell IntraNetWare name of your printer. You can type the name in directly or use the Windows 95 browse feature to find the IntraNetWare name of the output queue you will direct printouts to.
After you define the IntraNetWare output queue, finish adding the printer and test it. You will also have the option to specify this printer as your default printer. When the printer is added, you will have a desktop connection to an IntraNetWare printer that you can redirect output to from any Windows 95 program (including PC5250).
Step 2—Set up Your PC5250 Printer Session
Assuming you already have an AS/400 connection on this workstation, the next step is to configure a new PC5250 session to use as your AS/400 to IntraNetWare printer. You can set up this printer by using PC5250’s configuration utility.
Start this utility by selecting the Start button, Programs, the Client Access folder, the Accessories folder within Client Access/400, and then running the Start or Configure Session icon.
The program will prompt you to create a new session. Follow the prompts, which will lead you to the Configure PC5250 screen shown in Figure 2. On this screen, you will define all the parameters you need to create a new display or printer session. You’ll first need to define the AS/400 system name your printer will be accepting output from. To do this, click on the dropdown box in the System name field and select the AS/400 system you want to attach to. If you just ran the Client Access Add Connections Wizard program and your AS/400 isn’t listed yet, you can click on the Refresh button and the configuration program will revise the dropdown box entries to include any new systems.
To name your printer, enter a printer name in the Workstation ID field. If you do not enter a name, a name will be selected for you based on the AS/400 PC location name you set up when you configured your AS/400 connection.
To define this new session as an AS/400 printer, click on the Printer radio button and then click on the Setup button to define your printer. This takes you to the PC5250 Printer Emulation Setup screen shown in Figure 3. By default, PC5250 assumes you are using an IBM 3812 PagePrinter for your output and will format all your output in PagePrinter format. To change the printer model, click on the printer dropdown box and select the printer model that is closest to the printer you are actually using. You’ll notice that I said you should choose the printer that is closest to the one you’re using. Depending on the Client Access/400 version you’re running, there may not be a printer model entry that matches your printer. When this happens, your choices are simple. You can try loading a Client Access/400 for Windows 95/NT Service Pack to see if it has a new printer driver for
your printer, or you can use a similar printer model description that your printer can emulate. Most printers have at least one other printer type that they can accept output from. Hewlett Packard printers, for example, can generally handle output from any lower model in a printer series. If you have an HP LaserJet 6P, it can generally print out anything that is sent to it in LaserJet 5P, 4P, 3P, or even 2P format. Printer manufacturers build their printers to emulate machines from other manufacturers, so check your documentation for compatibility if PC5250 does not have a listing.
After you select the printer model, there are two other fields to set. The first is the Font for AS/400 print file field, which is where you set up your default printer font. IBM gives you a fairly wide listing of font types, ranging from the ubiquitous Courier to such unusual fonts as Math Symbol 15. PC5250 uses this font as it formats text output to send to your printer. The other option you may need to set is the Transform print data to ASCII on AS/400 field. Clicking on this field produces a check mark that tells PC5250 to translate your printer file to ASCII before sending it down to the printer. For most PC printers, you need to check this field.
Once you have defined all your printer emulation parameters, click on OK to return to the Configure PC5250 screen. Click on OK again and PC5250 will automatically start the printer on your AS/400, initializing your router if necessary. At this point, your printer is 80 percent configured, but you still need to do a little more work before it’s ready to use.
Step 3—Attach Your PC5250 Printer to Your IntraNetWare Output Queue
When PC5250 starts your IntraNetWare printer, it displays the printer emulation control screen shown in Figure 4 and you can begin sending printouts to the printer. However, unlike most other Windows 95 packages, the PC5250 client does not automatically send printouts to the default Windows 95 printer. Each printout may produce an error message to remind you that you have not yet configured a default printer. Clicking OK on this message will send a printout to your default Windows 95 printer, but PC5250 will not use that printer permanently until you explicitly configure it in your session description.
To select a Windows 95 printer for this session, stop the printer by clicking on the Stop button on the printer emulation control screen. Next, click on File in the menu bar and select Printer Setup. Select the Windows 95 IntraNetWare printer you defined in Step 1 and restart your AS/400 printer by clicking on Start on the control screen. Your session is now configured to always use the printer you selected.
Step 4—Save Your Configuration and Create an Icon
After you’ve gone through the trouble of creating a Windows 95-based AS/400-to- IntraNetWare printer, you need to save your work. Click on File in the PC5250 menu bar and then click on Save in the pull-down menu. PC5250 will prompt you for a file name for this session. Because you’re running in Windows 95, you can use long file names that are more descriptive than standard DOS eight-character names. You may also want to use a more descriptive name, because the file name is used when you create an icon for this session. However, whether you use a Windows 95 long name or a short DOS name, the extension for the file should always be WS for workstation. This is the standard extension name for PC5250 and it also serves as the default search criteria when PC5250 is looking for session files.
For this example, if you wanted to save your printer session file as AS/400 Printer 1, you would specify AS/400 Printer 1.WS as the file name. After you save the file, PC5250 will prompt you for a Windows 95 folder in which to create and save an icon for starting up your printer. The default save location is the Accessories folder inside your Client Access/400 folder. However, there are two other sensible places to store this icon: the Windows 95 Start menu and the Windows 95 desktop. If you want to place the icon in the Start menu (where it will connect every time you start Windows 95), designate the following folder location:
C:WINDOWSSTART MENU _ PROGRAMSSTARTUP If you want to place the icon on your Windows 95 desktop, tell PC5250 to place the icon in:
C:WINDOWSDESKTOP Once the icon is created, you can activate your printer simply by clicking on it. PC5250 specifies the file name you specified (without the WS extension) as its shortcut name.
Four (Relatively) Easy Steps
As you can see, there really isn’t much to configuring a Windows 95-based AS/400-to-IntraNetWare printer with PC5250. It’s simply a matter of having your Windows 95 software configured correctly and running through a few simple programs. In a heterogeneous world, having three vendors work together so easily is a big plus.
Figure 1: When you add a printer, Windows 95 prompts to determine if it is a locally-attached or a network printer.
Figure 2: The Configure PC5250 screen allows you to specify if this is a display or a printer session.
Figure 3: The PC5250 Printer Emulation Setup screen allows you to specify printer parameters.
Figure 4: The printer emulation control screen allows you to start and stop your
printer.
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