Parallel Port PCI or PCI-E card

Harvey616 · 16 Jan 2013 at 12:12

Hello all,

My dad has just upgraded his work computer, but has some legacy printing hardware that only has a parallel port on the back. We tried a USB to Parallel cable, but the company that makes the legacy device don't have correct drivers for it.

The motherboard is an Asus M5A78L-M so has some spare PCI-e and PCI slots. Can anyone recommend a good parallel port card please?

mickyflinn · 16 Jan 2013 at 12:45

I would just buy a cheap card, there pretty much all the same.

ubersonic · 16 Jan 2013 at 13:57

Harvey616 said:
Hello all,

My dad has just upgraded his work computer, but has some legacy printing hardware that only has a parallel port on the back. We tried a USB to Parallel cable, but the company that makes the legacy device don't have correct drivers for it.

The motherboard is an Asus M5A78L-M so has some spare PCI-e and PCI slots. Can anyone recommend a good parallel port card please?

Er...

If you can't get it to work with a USB to Parallel cable then you probably won't get it to work with a card either, they both just add a Parallel port to the PC. If the Device your trying to connect is having driver issues that's with the device/OS not the USB/PCI/PCIE adapter.

What is the legacy device? (that's kind of important info).

paradigm · 16 Jan 2013 at 14:00

As ubersonic said. The USB> Parallel cable requires it's own drivers that are completely separate from those of the printing hardware.

After the USB device is configured properly the end result is an LPT1 port available to the OS and the printing hardware.

I'd suggest your problem is either the wrong drivers for the cable, or the wrong drivers for the printer.

Harvey616 · 16 Jan 2013 at 16:04

The hardware is a Gerber EDGE thermal printer.

The problem turns out to be that the software doesn't support the use of a parallel to USB cable, I managed to install the drivers and the software recognised it, but wouldn't work.

Will there be no hope with trying a PCI card?

ubersonic · 16 Jan 2013 at 16:23

Harvey616 said:
The hardware is a Gerber EDGE thermal printer.

The problem turns out to be that the software doesn't support the use of a parallel to USB cable, I managed to install the drivers and the software recognised it, but wouldn't work.

Will there be no hope with trying a PCI card?

You see the thing is, its not really possible for the software to have issues with the USB-LPT adapter because it won't know it exists, as far as it knows it just sees an LPT port on the system, it has no way of knowing if that port is soldered to the board, on a USB adapter, on an expansion card, or even a virtual port mapped to an network printer on the other side of the building.

Does the software require a specific setting on the port I.E SSP/ECP/EPP? this may need to be configured accordingly in the port settings under device manager.