Printer Sharing?

[michaelh20]

I have this cheepee printer ($88), a HP Deskjet 612c, parallel port ONLY, miniscule amount of memory, that I bought (better than dot matrix 🙂 At any rate, I was planning on sharing the printer with another computer. Now I know I can buy a couple of cheepee network cards and probably a cross-over cable for not a whole lot of money. But this means that I will have to have both computers to share printer, unless I am mistaken.. Is there any *cheap* way of getting a printer shared without having to have both computers on?

I suppose a switch box or something? But do those things work and not mess up the transmission and stuff? And why the heck don't printer manufactors even give the latest inkjets a REAL network port, instead of making us buy some $300 printer server?

Thanks.

 

[ffwd]

I have been using a data switch at work for years. Not exactly the same setup as you have.(2 printers on one PC) But we had it setup once the way you want it 2 PCs and one printer. It has never let me down. The only pain is remembering to use the switch.

 

[goldboyd]

you should be able to get a manual a/b parallel switch for about $15-20. easy to setup, easy to use, sounds like what you're looking for. you just run a parallel cable from both computers to the switch, then hook the printer to the switch and move the knob from a to b depending on which box you want to print with

 

[Ladi]

Automatic switch boxes are also fairly cheap and reliable, with no more remebering to flip a switch to print. Egghead, for example, lists several under $20

~Ladi

 

[Supergax]

Some HP's (most of the deskjets actually) have problems with data switches, or at least my 722C did with the manual data switch i was using. I don't think it supported IEEE-1284, which is what HP's like to have so they can use the spiffy bi-directional printing stuff. I think as long as it supports the 1284 standard it should be okey dokey.