Microsoft Print Server Appliance?

Does anyone make a small cigarette box sized box that would act as a
Microsoft print server? We have a Zebra printer that has a really silly
interface that requires you to copy templates to the printer memory by copy
them over as files using the UNC syntax \\printerserver\zebra-printer-name
as the destination for the file copy. We don't want to enable file and
printer sharing on any of our workstations, and we don't want to attach the
printer to a server room computer that does have file sharing enabled for
convenience reasons. We hate to set up yet one more computer that we have
to maintain and secure, and we are hoping to find a simplistic cheap
appliance that would suffice as the network interface to this computer.

One key thing: we would like todisable NetBIOS over TCP on our network, so
we don't want to rely on ports 137, 138, or 139 for any of this.

What are my options?

--
Will

Will,

finding a printer server is probably not that hard, but please remember that
you still need a driver for this Zebra printer on the workstations you print
from... and that could be challenging.... as Zebra printers require
templates seperate for data, it is not your bulk standard "network printer"
to print documents...

I would suggest that you involve your hardware vendor to find a solution.
This because of the fact that Zebra's are pretty specific HW for very
specific purposes (such as label and barcode printing)

rgsd,
Edwin.


"Will" <westes-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) ...
> Does anyone make a small cigarette box sized box that would act as a
> Microsoft print server? We have a Zebra printer that has a really silly
> interface that requires you to copy templates to the printer memory by
copy
> them over as files using the UNC syntax \\printerserver\zebra-printer-name
> as the destination for the file copy. We don't want to enable file and
> printer sharing on any of our workstations, and we don't want to attach
the
> printer to a server room computer that does have file sharing enabled for
> convenience reasons. We hate to set up yet one more computer that we
have
> to maintain and secure, and we are hoping to find a simplistic cheap
> appliance that would suffice as the network interface to this computer.
>
> One key thing: we would like todisable NetBIOS over TCP on our network,
so
> we don't want to rely on ports 137, 138, or 139 for any of this.
>
> What are my options?
>
> --
> Will
>
>

"Edwin vMierlo" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:eqnwCrn#(E-Mail Removed)...
> finding a printer server is probably not that hard, but please remember
that
> you still need a driver for this Zebra printer on the workstations you
print
> from... and that could be challenging.... as Zebra printers require
> templates seperate for data, it is not your bulk standard "network
printer"
> to print documents...

Our application is barcode printing. Users are now able to copy over
templates as if the printer itself was a destination file system object, and
somehow that is working. Those users do not have Zebra drivers installed
on the machines they copy the templates from. They do of course have the
drivers installed on the computers that print the barcode labels.

For security reasons, I don't want file and printer sharing running on an
end user workstation and would like to find a very simple appliance to help
with the copying over of the templates (so we can use the UNC convention).
Would the printer server itself also require a Zebra print driver, or could
it somehow act as a passthrough queue from the client to the printer?

If you have any specific vendor recommendations for the server I would
appreciate it.

--
Will