PCTech Forums

currently we are using acer computer towers running Windows xp with 512 MB of RAM connected to these boxes needs to be a text only printer with only a Parallel connector as there are no Parallel ports on the Mother board we are using a usb to parallel adapter. We are having issues with this adapter however the computer sees that the adapter is attached to the computer but many times it does not see the printer attached to the adapter on the other end is there a way to force it to see it? or to force install it, I've tried doing it through the printers and faxes, rebooting, different cables, different ports.

I'd like to refresh this posting sometimes these cables will work on one machine and not another and sometimes after rebooting several times it will work, I want to know if there is anyway of making them work reliably 98% of the time.

cking,

I think you will never get the USB adapter to work 98% of the time.

I would recommend you try a Parallel port pci card like and it's only $9.89.

thanks but due to the nature of these acers (they are slimline small cases) there are no PCI card slots in order to put one of these in and we need the slimline cases in order to fit in the limited space and we have to use these text only printers to print receipts for customers so you see the delma

http://store.acer.com/product.asp?pf_id=1011213451

what it has is a minipci slot however there is no place to punch out for a card to be accessed and plugged in.

wow, that is tiny.

Try mapping LPT1 to whatever port the USB device is. When the PC looks for printer on LPT1, it will map to that USB port. Not sure if that will do ya or not, but I have heard of it being done. Alternatively, use a print server with a parallel port and do this at the command prompt:

net use LPT1: 192.168.xxx.xxx

or whatever the IP of the printserver is on the network.

This method works as I have done it before for some older applications.

Thanks for everyone's help, we decided to try a different company for adapters and they seem to be working the other solution we were given was change the interface card on the printer itself.

You could have a com port conflict. Especially if you are imaging the units. We have some retail units that have several peripherals attached to them. We use a USB thermal printer. XP will see the device, but it won't print using the retail software.

The solution was to go into device manager and click on ports. If you have several, look for the one with com 4 or com 3 assigned and move that port to say com 10. Our problem was that the touchscreen was grabbing port 4 and the printer wanted the same port.

Thanks Ice cube I think it was a combination of a port conflict and the cables we purchased were poor quality we bought another brand and they appear to work fine... as long as we plug the printer in the same port we staged it on.