Technical Notes
The following Technical Notes apply to the NIH Computer Center and the software and hardware available via MVS on the IBM 370 systems at NIH and may not necessarily reflect similar implementations at other installations. For additional technical details or clarification, consult the NIH Computer Center User’s Guide, or contact TASC. Information presented in this publication supersedes all documentation with earlier publication dates. To contact any of the groups mentioned in these articles, please refer to the telephone listing at the back of this Interface.
MVS South
Register for the Network Printing Service, TSPrint, via the WebCustomers wishing to use TSPrint network printing service must be registered by CIT. Registration is important, since it allows for the correct configuration of printers on NIHnet. Registration can now be done via the web. (See also the article in Interface 205, March 1998.)
How TSPrint Works
TSPrint, a product of Tone Software Corporation, enables print requests generated on the MVS system to be printed on network (LAN) connected printers using the Berkeley line print daemon (LPD) mechanism. Printed output can come from Administrative Data Base (ADB)/Delpro, DB2, Wylbur, TSO, or batch jobs. The printer receives the print request from a host running the LPD protocol. The printers can be connected to a PC, a Unix workstation or a device designed specifically for this task (e.g., a LanTronix box). AppleTalk printers are accessible using the Network Systems Branch AppleTalk converter as their LPD host. This converter translates the LPD protocol to AppleTalk protocol to enable printing on the AppleTalk printers.
CIT is responsible for maintaining TSPrint, ensuring availability and maintaining print queues, including the addition of new printer queues. The people who request TSPrint queues are responsible for running and maintaining the LPD server and the queues on that server. If LPD queues are not properly configured then TSPrint can not deliver print requests. CIT will be able to provide help in setting up the LPD server and defining the queues on the LPD server. Configuration of the LPD server is a function of the TCP/IP software being run on the user’s machine.
TSPrint and the Web
For more details about TSPrint, online registration of new print queues, and to modify or remove existing printer queues go to the webpage http://silk.nih.gov/silk/eps/.