LPT Port?

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jeffm
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Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2008 8:23 pm

LPT Port?

Post by jeffm »

I've never looked at Pin2K closely. I watched some of your videos in the media section and in the first video it appeared that the only IO from the PC is the video port for the display and LPT port for switches, lamps, and solenoids.

A couple of questions:
1. You're using the factory IO boards? They were, and continue to be in your solution, controlled by PC over an LPT connection?
2. Do the factory IO boards fail? Are they easily replaced?
3. Wouldn't you consider LPT an obsolete technology? I haven't seen a machine with that port in years.
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Chuck
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Re: LPT Port?

Post by Chuck »

1) Yes. We support the original driver boards via LPT
2) They do fail on occasion but they seem fairly bulletproof compared to wpc boards. They are also very user serviceable.
3) LPT ports will eventually die. We considered providing LPT on our hardware but decided against it. There are still lots of MB manufacturers providing parallel ports on new mb's. If you can't go that route there are parallel drop-in cards and they are dirt cheap. So I don't think this will be an issue in the forseeable future.
dmoslander
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Re: LPT Port?

Post by dmoslander »

What about USB to parallel adapter cables, are those supported? I have an old PC without any serial/parallel ports and wanted to use it the host, but would like to know if I can use a usb adapter cable instead of an addin card.
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Chuck
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Re: LPT Port?

Post by Chuck »

dmoslander wrote:What about USB to parallel adapter cables, are those supported? I have an old PC without any serial/parallel ports and wanted to use it the host, but would like to know if I can use a usb adapter cable instead of an addin card.
We haven't tried those. We don't think they will work based on how they operate but we could be wrong.
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