Academic and Research Computing

Printing from your own Windows PC

Before you begin...

If you have your own desktop PC or a laptop that was not provided by Rensselaer, you will need to buy and install an Ethernet card (available at the Campus Computer Store) and configure your computer for network access. See Memo RPI.125, the section on Installing and Configuring a TCP/IP Stack. Note that on laptops provided by Rensselaer, these steps have already been done.

Authentication

First, be sure you have supplied your RCS userID and password in the Windows login dialog box, displayed at Windows startup.

Connecting to the RCS Network

Next, you must connect to RCS through sambasrv, the server that connects Windows machines to the networked campus printers and to RCS files and directories:

On a Rensselaer laptop: just double-click the RCS File and Print icon on the desktop. In the connect window that appears, check either (or both) of the boxes that allow you to connect to your RCS home directory or to the RCS public areas. Click OK.
On a desktop pc or non-RPI laptop: follow the instructions to map a network drive.

You can now use your application's Print dialog box to print to any RCS networked printer that has been added to your system. To see which printers you have, click the Start menu and select Settings, then Printers.

If you don't see the printer you want to use, you will need to add the appropriate printer driver for that printer, described below.

Adding a Printer Driver

Before installing a printer driver, you need to know 2 things:

the name of the printer, for example, tr2018lw
the recommended printer driver for the chosen printer

To find this information, see a list of public printers. On the list, you can click on the name of any printer to find out the recommended driver. For almost all the black & white, one-sided printers on campus, we recommend the driver Apple LaserWriter 16/600 PS. (This driver is on the hard drive for the laptops and most other Windows computers.). A few printers have special features: for example, the printer in the VCC Print Room, called vcblw, is an HP5000 N that prints 2-sided on B-size (11"x17") paper. To take advantage of such special features, you will need to install the printer driver for that particular model printer.

Once you have the necessary information, you can proceed with the steps to add a printer driver to your PC.

Checking the Print Queue

Currently, you need to connect to the RCS UNIX system in order to check the print queues of the various networked printers. To make the connection, double-click the SecureCRT icon to start a secure telnet session to one of the remote UNIX hosts. After you start SecureCRT, a Connect window will appear. Select a hostname from the list and click OK. You will then be prompted for your RCS userID and password.

Once you are connected, enter the command lpq at the UNIX prompt, using the -P option to specify the name of the printer you used. For example, if you sent your job to vclw, the double-sided printer in the VCC Print Room, the command would be:

    lpq -P vclw

When you have finished your remote session, type logout and then close the SecureCRT window.