E-Stamp's dongle

[TheBigZ]

Like many of us here, I got hooked up with E-Stamp back when the HP930C deal was going on. At that time I was using win98se on an Abit mb with a cel300@450. The dongle was plugged onto the end of the parallel adapter used with the Logitech Pagescan Pro I was using at the time for faxing. All was right with the world.
Then I upgraded to a p3-700@933 on an Asus CUSL2 mb and I switched to win2k. Since the Logi wasn't going to work with win2k I went with a nice usb flatbed scanner. So now I have nothing plugged into my parallel port (all my printers are either usb or on the lan).
That's when the trouble started. Now the dongle is plugged directly into the parellel port. It now takes almost 10 mins to print one postage label. As a test, I plugged the parallel adapter back in & put the dongle back on the end of that... and it printed normally again.
The only conclusion I can make, is that plugging the dongle directly into the parallel port is the problem. E-Stamp has been no help. They suggested changing the type of parallel port on the mb bios. Did that, no help. It almost seems like the port is talking too fast for the dongle if it's plugged in alone. Like somehow having something else on the port slows it down?

Anyway, I can't be the ONLY guy runnin this on a cusl2 with nothing else on the port... can I? Any suggestions? Thoughts? Aimless ramblings? 😉

Thanks

 

[Conroy9]

well i had all sorts of trouble running it on my cusl2 with win2k; i.e. it worked once, it patched, and could never find the dongle again

so i moved it to a laptop (not cusl2 obviously) which runs win2k, and it prints fine
i have nothing on the end of the parallel port, and i'm printing to a network printer
i also have a usb printer hooked up to the laptop

so i'm not sure how this post helps you at all, except to say that it's not win2k or a generic parallel port problem 🙂

maybe something gets turned off with your parallel port when you have no device attached to it?

 

[rahvin]

Is your port set to ECP or EPP?

 

[TheBigZ]

I've tried all the options the bios allowed for the port. Also, at the suggestion of EStamp, I installed an HP series II printer driver to the parallel port even tho no such printer existed, in an effort to slow it down. I'm fairly convinced it's a design flaw in the dongle. IE: they were designed when everyone almost always had something on the parallel port. And something in that design (probably no major leaps in dongle technology) can't handle the speeds of todays ports without something else hooked on it to throttle it somehow. If that's the case, E-Stamp is gonna need to remedy it if they want me to keep using their service.

 

[VladTrishkin]

My dongle was never even recognized under w2k and Cusl2... i ditched estamp.

 

[Conroy9]

they released a patch awhile ago to support win2k

 

[hymy]

<< I plugged the parallel adapter back in &amp; put the dongle back on the end of that... and it >>




And you can't leave it that way, Why? If it'd worked one way, I think I would just leave it that way. But that's just me.

 

[Conroy9]

ah yeah
that's why i mentnioned my laptop
it's a p2/400 with nothing else attached to the parallel port, so I would think that the port shouldn't be much slower than a cusl2's port?

That's why i didn't think it was a dongle problem

 

[TheBigZ]

I'm using the win2k version. And I'm not using the Logitech adapter anymore because I sold that scanner. The stubborn sob in me didn't wanna pass up a $40 sale just to kludge someone else's screwup. 😉 I have this delusion view that stuff should work like they say it will without me having to build it a better mousetrap first.

 

[jamarno]

ECP or EPP isn't necessary, and some people report success only after they switch the printer port to SPP mode. I've been using ancient ISA parallel port cards, both for E-stamp (Win 98 1st Ed., Win2K) and other dongles. These cards may have to be manually installed in the Device Manager.

 

[TheBigZ]

Just give this a little kick up, in case someone else has any insight.

Thanks