Not the cheapest but a good solution is a print server, dlink make a single
port one for around ~$110.
Bill Chesnut
BizTalk Server MVP
Melbourne, Australia
_____
From: Greg Keogh [mailto:[email protected]]
To: 'ozDotNet' [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:08:03 +1000
Subject: [OT] Windows 7 and Parallel port card
Folks, I’ve been helping a friend migrate from a 4 year old box to a snazzy new
one we built last week.
He has an EPSON Stylus 700 printer which plugs into the 25-pin male printer
port on the old box, but the new motherboard doesn’t have those old types of
plugs, just USBs. He either buys a new printer, buys a Centronix-to-USB cable
or buys a parallel port card. We did the latter cheap option because the local
shop had a $12 Ritmo 1-port parallel card available.
Now I can’t get Windows 7 to recognise the card. It came with a driver CD which
only goes as far as Vista and an attempt to install that driver gives a helpful
message like “Installation failed”. Web searches produced one possible driver
from a different brand, but that install produces a version rejection message.
Device Manager shows the parallel port card with an exclamation mark. Attempts
to upgrade the driver from here always fail. Attempts to locate the driver INF
file also fail. I can also see COM1 and LPT1 listed in Device Manager, but I
presume they don’t actually exist.
I’m confused and out of ideas. Any ideas anyone?
Greg
