Good guess, but no

Hey, it works

The company I use to work for actually had an Windows 3.1 application that ran on an old PC. The application was used once a week and was not considered critical. The current version that ran on the latest version of Windows costs a lot more than the department was willing to pay. So the pc jusr sat in the corner running quietly. By the way we only had to reboot the PC around 3 times over 10 years.

Print queue conundrums

I once took over management on a vax cluster with an interesting print queue configuration. There was this one print queue that seemed to be pretty busy. In fact, it had a few jobs in the queue that had just been submitted from a tech I knew was on vacation. A quick review of the printer definition showed that it was a remote printer set up to print remotely to itself. Any print job submitted would just get forwarded to the remote print queue (i.e. itself) which would then be forwarded etc. This had been going on for months. Can you say IO?

HOLLY CARP

TIHS GUY MSUT HAVE BEEEN A DOOR CHOOCK HOW SPTUPID COULD HE BE ANNYBDODDY THAT DMUB COOD GET A JBOB AS A AKRANSAS STATE TROOOPER

C'mon people...THINK!!!

Two things wrong with all of the commenter's logic on this:

1) Where did it state that the typrewriter was a "Selectric". They had daisywriters also which could be used as printers. BUT neither had automatic paper trays! Any subsequent printing would have been blindly printed on the platen without human intervention.

2) How would the print server know anything about a "local" printer! Even if it was a selectric or Daisywriter, it would have been connected via parallel or serial cable. And if it WAS connected to the print server, they would have seen the cable hanging off of it and could simply follow it to the printer!

I used to work on typewriters in the early 80's - using a selectric as a printer was a horrible idea.

I think the point was that the "office worker" (probably a young kid that hasn't ever known life without CD's!) didn't realize the typewriter wasn't really a printer.

Alternate scenario

A little asking around turns up the fact that the machine automatically transfers some files each night.

It's been doing that for years -- so long, and so completely free of glitches, that everyone has forgotten that it's even there.

I can just see it ...

1) IT gets lazy and shuts down the old print server, figuring that the one person who is still trying to use it will complain eventually.
2) That night the mystery machine hangs because it can't find it's printer.
3) A Month later someone finally realizes that certain files aren't getting transferred like they used to and submits a trouble ticket, still without remembering or referring to the unmanned machine.

This is a job for... Login script!

We run a Windows Active Directory domain, so adding and removing printers is not really an issue. Add the new printer share, modify the login script to install it on the PCs of people in groups that should have access to it, wait one day; next day, modify the login script to remove the old printer. Viola! job done. A few computers sometimes get missed when the user isn't in the office for a few days, but when they return, it's still handled automatically.

Of course, we would still run into problems if there was an unmanned PC using a network printer and not getting logged off every night. I'm happy that doesn't happen here.

"injunctonis sodded" - We buried the process server under that grass over there.

Selectrics CAN be printers

Does anyone remember when courageous souls would actually convert Selectric typewriters to be printers for their pre-PC microcomputers, circa 1975-1980? PROBABLY the Selectric in this story was not so converted ... or maybe it was and really being a printer.