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I have a new printer and a old (Windows 98) system (that can't be upgraded). I've been told that some of the drivers for older printers of the same make are very likely to work just fine for it if I can talk windows into using them.

Is there a way to edit the map of device IDs (VID/PID?) to USB drivers?

The specific kind of tool I'm looking for should work for any kind of USB drivers, not just printers. OTOH if someone knows of a technique that work for some kinds of printers, that could be of (general) interest.

Note: just to be clear, I'm not thinking of writing my own drivers or anything near that. What I have, is a driver that I've been told is more or less a pure PostScript or PCL driver and a printer I've been told may well accept one and/or the other... if I can just get the two to talk.

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No. You were incorrectly informed. – Randolph West Dec 29 '10 at 23:12
@Randolph Potter: Could you cite your sources? At this point I have no basis for thinking that you know more than my other sources. (And I would be very surprised if NO new printers are able to be run by older drivers; I know how lazy programmers are!) – BCS Dec 29 '10 at 23:32
Usually only very closely related printers can share and river and this can only by determined through experimentation. Of course, if printer uses some traditional page description language like Postscript or PCL, you could use drivers for some other printer. – AndrejaKo Dec 30 '10 at 0:33
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You may be stepping into the realm of writing a device wrapper here to expose the underlying VID / PID for a USB device in order to utilise it. With respect, I don't understand why you would put yourself through such pain. What are you actually trying to achieve if the printer is irrelevant? The extremely narrow focus of the question is outside of the scope of this forum. – Randolph West Dec 30 '10 at 1:54
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@@BCS On that screen, you should be able to navigate to directory where the driver is and select it. Some warning will show up, but you will, if I remember correctly, have option to ignore them. As for selecting your own answer, that's how we do things here. Take a look at this and this meta questions. Don't worry, you won't get any reputation from selecting your own answer. – AndrejaKo Dec 30 '10 at 3:13
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closed as too localized by digitxp, Randolph West, studiohack♦, Diago Dec 30 '10 at 14:56

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