Adding a parellel port for scanner

[Fred Forsythe]

I have an older scanner with a parallel connection. I would like to use it with my newly built, parallel port-free PC. I see Newegg has usb to parallel cables, such as http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812119003 but they don't seem to mention supporting scanners, just printers.

Specs on this one are

USB: Type A Male
IEEE-1284: DB-25/F
Cable Length: 1.8 M
Chipset: Polific 2305
OS Support: Windows98/SE/ME/2000/XP, MAC OS 8.6~9.0
Data Transfer Rate: full speed 12Mbpa,low speed 1.5Mbps
Features

Single chip USB to Parallel host to host communication
USB full speed communication and bus powered
USB Printer Class Specification 1.1 compliant
IEEE-1284 1994 (bi-directional parallel interface) specification compliant



The package & web site on this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822998005 does mention scanners. but it gets bad overall reviews. I know there are parallel cards, such as http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815104211 but since I will only use the scanner occasionally & have no other parallel devices, I don't want to dedicate a slot to it. I'm wondering if "a parallel port is a parallel port" & I can use any of the usb-parallel cables, not just the badly reviewed one that specifically mentions scanners.

TIA

Fred

[Rick]

If you have a PCIe1 slot open
I would go with something like this

http://www.softio.com/ic0652kb.htm

Finding it retail may require a lot of searching.
But the PCIe 1 slot is not used by anything
So you wouldn't be wasting a slot on the PCI card you have linked above.

As for the cables./ adapters
Save your Money
They don't work well with printers
So getting bi directional communication to work with a scanner is asking a lot

[mjc]

What scanner do you have?

If it doesn't have XP drivers/software it may not be worth trying to get it hooked up, anyway.

[Rick]

I looked at the price ( after posting above ) of these PCIe cards and it would cost less to just get a new scanner

[Fred Forsythe]

Thanks for the responses. I do have an available PCI slot, since the cards are about the same $$$ as the cable, I should probably go with that until I get a new scanner. The old one is a Microtek which does work well, I had it running under my current XP home on my old machine. Usable for thet time being.

Fred