[GLLUG] Additional Serial & Parallel Ports

[Charles Ulrich]

Hi Chick,

A couple of suggestions to add to the pool of existing ones:

One option may be USB -> serial/parallel adapters. Serial port adapters 
are cheap and plentiful. I'm not sure about parallel ports though, since 
I don't see them as often. Both will require kernel drivers to work. 
Most serial adapters have drivers built into the Linux kernel but again, 
not so sure about parallel.

If you want to talk to a printer on the parallel port, and happen to be 
running a network at home, you could also look into a print server. 
These are little boxes that plug straight into the printer's parallel 
port and have an ethernet port on the other end. HP used to make these 
under the brand JetDirect. Not sure about the availability or cost of 
these any more, but they're bound to still be out there. They don't 
require any special drivers (apart from the ability of your OS to print 
to a network resource) and I _think_ they work with just about any 
printer.

Charles



Only downside is that they generally require special drivers

On 2012-09-30 23:18, Chick Tower wrote:
> I wanted to use both a serial and a parallel port on my desktop PC,
> but it's new enough that it has neither.  I found several PCI cards 
> on
> Newegg that have serial and parallel ports.  However, in my
> motherboard manual it appears there are internal plugs for cables on
> the motherboard for one of each port.
>
> Would a PCI card interfere with the motherboard's ports?  Is there
> any reason it wouldn't work with Linux?
>
> Are there cables that can connect to the motherboard and some
> external ports that are simply mounted on something like those metal
> covers for the PCI slots?
>
> Does anyone know of a cheap, local source for these devices?
>
> Thanks.