Possible to hook up a 2nd parallel port?

[viewton]

My father-in-law has a scanner and printer daisy-chained to one parallel port. When he tries to use the "copy utility", which basically means the image from the scanner is directly sent to the printer, the computer locks up on him.

He just called HP, and they said he might need an extra parallel port b/c all that data going between the PC, Scanner, and Printer is getting potentially scrambled.

My question is, where do I find an extra parallel port, and how would I hook it up? I don't know of any place on the motherboard to hook it up to. Do they have special cards possibly?

HP did mention using a USB cable, but his mobo doesn't have USB. Is it possible to buy a card for that?

Thanks in advance for any help, it's much appreciated!
-view

 

[sohcrates]

yes, you CAN buy an extra parallel port card and you CAN buy a usb port card.

i used to use a parallel port card to run my printer out of one and my old-school webcam out of the other.

walmart sells usb pci cards if you wanted one of those. as far as parallel port cards, some radio shack's carry them, or you can look around the internet, i'm sure they're out there

 

[SaturnX]

You can purchase USB controller cards that connect through the PCI Bus, which give older computers USB ports that can be used. Here's a couple from Buy.Com

--Mark

ADS PCI USB Controller
Belkin PCI USB Controller

 

[Noriaki]

Sure you can have an LPT2, and you can get them as ISA or PCI cards.

You can also get USB PCI cards if he using Win98, ME or 2000 (and possible Win95 OSR2.x but USB can be iffy there, my scanner wouldn't work in Win95 OSR2)

 

[viewton]

Thank you for the help guys, that was quick!

I'll probably just go with an LPT2 card just so things don't get too complicated.

Thanks again!

<edit>

 

[Noriaki]

I might not be a bad idea to get the USB card if you have a new enough OS, you never know when it might be handy to have USB ports available.

personally I prefer Parallel for Printers and Scanners because it has almost as much bandwidth as the whole USB bus, and it's dedicated to that device, but it might be handy to have USB ports available.

 

[vec]

Viewton, I have a card that you may be able to use. You have PM.