Print server?

[Netwurked]

Another neat thing you could do with a print server is "printer pooling". From his workstation, your friend would see one printer hosted by the print server. Print to it and the print server would determine which of the printers in the pool is available and send the print job there.

Correctomundo.. It is also called tandem printing whereas each physical device is connected through proprietary cable or cat 5 and you would essentially use the print drivers to split the job to each device.

[Netwurked]

I have four of those big fucking xerox networkable printers with the memory and shit. They rule. those aren't the problem. I have five older Primera printers that connect through a printer port. I'm trying to scale down my workspace so I'm not using five fucking computers.

I would be doing all day print jobs on no less than three of these printers at once, can i build a PC with super sex print capabilities to spool data out like that to multiple printers with no slowing down?

I really don't know what I'm talking about, if anyone has any ideas at all please chime in.

Sounds like you need to ditch the older Primera printers and buy yourself a high speed b&w printer with a rj-45 connection built in. New devices on the market today have ample memory and can rip 20 meg plus jobs on the fly. Also you wouldn't need a print server as the print drivers would be installed locally on each PC. How much can you spend? I can give you suggestions if needed.

[Opaque]

the five printers I am trying to hook up connect through the printer port. No usb.

You could use a Parallel to USB adapter on each one.

That's still the best and cheapest solution.