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Author
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Topic: PC Printer Cables
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Stephen Furley
Film God
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Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 10-30-2003 06:37 AM
What operating system are you running?
If it's something that supports USB, then I'd go that way, but if you're running something like Windows NT4, which doesn't, then you'll have to go parallel. I haven't tried with XP, but Windows 2000 generally works ok with printers on parallel ports, but many other parallel devices, disks, tape drives etc., often have problems.
Some versions of Windows 95 had support for USB, but it had problems, and is best avoided; 98, Me, 2000 and XP all work fine with USB, as do all recent wersions of the Mac system. Drivers are available for Linux as well.
Generally, forget the parallel port if you can.
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Randy Stankey
Film God
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Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 10-31-2003 08:27 AM
I would put forth that USB isn't popular, necessarily because of it's speed, (it is relatively fast) but for it's "Plug & Play" aspects.
When you plug the device in, the computer recognizes it almost instantly. It's hot-pluggable and it's expandable to 254 devices on each port. It's also not limited to a specific use. It can be used for printers, disk drives, scanners, audio devices and other stuff.
With parallel and regular serial ports you have to power down the machine(s) whenever you plug or unplug a device. You often have to activate the port when you want to use it.
Way back, several years ago, me and some friends were drinking and talking about how many different kinds of plugs there are on the back of computers. (This was in the 80's.) We postulated that there should be one or two different kinds of ports on the back of a computer and that it would be pretty easy to have devices be automatically recognized by the computer when they are plugged in or unplugged. It seems like that theory is quickly becomming a reality!
I guess you could say that my friends and I invented USB way back then! I still haven't seen any royalty checks, yet!
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