I have a printer and a scanner on the same parallel port. Can I add a cd burner to the same port? I don’t want to know whether this is fast or efficient. It probably isn’t. I just want to know if it will work at all. I would only be using one device at a time.
I learned the hard way that parallel devices don’t “chain” well. Do you have a USB port? You could get a USB converter for your printer and run the other two devices parallel. Or, if you haven’t bought the CD burner yet, get one with a non-parallel interface.
You not only have the “chaining” problem, you also have the problem of “Parallel ports aren’t really fast enough for efficient cd burning”.
Assuming you have a spare internal IDE spot (and, if you have less than 4 total hard disk+cdrom drives, you probably do), go with an internal and open up the big, scary box.
If you must do external, go with USB.
LordVor
Forget the whole chain notion. Get a switch box, they come as manual and automatic switches. They cost about $20 (more for automatic). Its a lot cheaper than buying a new USB burner, granted they are better. Also, use IEEE 1284? parallel cables.
I use a switch box with a great deal of success, only because Im not fortunate enough to own the latest and greatest technologies.
Good luck
Or you could get another parl card, they are only $5 from a computer store & you can set it for another IRQ.
If by “parl” you mean “parallel,” that may not work either. “HAL” here has the original parallel port plus an aftermarket double parallel card installed. Somewhere along the line I got a bizarre conflict which means that I can only use two of my three ports, and my tape backup works on none of them – I have to run it on my networked laptop. what a headache that was to figure out and set up.
Inferno’s idea sounds nifty – how long have you been using the switch box, and for what devices on what type of system? Please tell us more.
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*Originally posted by Scarlett67 *
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I use my switch box for a colour inkjet printer, a laserjet printer, and a scanner. It works great but make sure you have the switch in the proper position BEFORE you press print.
Cheers
Dante
When buying a switch box, make sure it allows all signals to pass through both ways. I bought a cheap one and my Zip drive does not work on it.
Also when using a switch box, make sure your cable lengths are ok. Most boxes just do pass-through, not amplify, so if you use a max-length cable to get to the box, and a max length cable from the box to the device, there’s no chance in heck that it would work. The total length of both of the cables should be less than the maximum lenght of a parallel cable (not sure what that is off the top of my head).
-LordVor
What is the maximum length of parallel these days?
galen, how do you have two things connected to the same port? Did you connect the printer to the back of the scanner as most of them have a parl port back there.
Yes, I did. It works fine. I bought a PCI parallel port card for the burner. I don’t use USB because I have Windows 95.