Virtualization Station 3 - Win Server 2003 + Parallel Printers

[SKahle83]

I've got a QNAP running Virtualization Station 3 with a Windows Server 2003 R2 virtual machine running on it. I am trying to preserve a very old system by virtualizing it, but I am having a lot of trouble with the printers. On the old physical machine, I had 3 parallel ports going to a few old-school dot-matrix printers (Okidata / Panasonic.) These printers were shared on the domain, and used by the accounting system software to print carbon-copy forms. Now that I have virtualized the server, I can't seem to get consistent results with printing when it comes to USB to Parallel converters.

I used VS3 to connect the three USB devices to my VM, and then configured the existing printer ports to use the new USB Virtual Ports that windows created. It seems that under certain conditions (a power failure, a forced shutdown, or removing the USB connectors from the QNAP, that the printers lose their association with the appropriate USB virtual port. The printers just become unresponsive and "offline." If I unplug-and-replug the printers, additional virtual USB ports are created. The only thing that has seemed to work is deleting all my printers, and setting them up from scratch each time one of these events occurs. I'm desperate for advice in how to remedy the situation.

[iam@nas]

I have no idea about how to fix the vUSB assignments. Something like https://www.tp-link.com/de/download/TL-PS110P.html may help to get rid of the virtual USB ports, some Panasonic and Okidata printers are supported.
Trying to keep such old and unsupported soft- and hardware alive is no fun but I guess you have your reasons not using network laser printers.

[dolbyman]

I used parallel port print servers 15 years ago (oki and hp) they worked great