How long can a LPT chain be?

[Dirk Fust]

Hi!

Just wanted to ask if anybody can tell me, how long an LPT-chain can
be... I've got a scanner attached to my computer and a printer attached
to the scanner.

The Scanner-Computer cable is about 1 meter long. That is perfectly
fine, I know. But can anybody tell me how long the way from Printer to
Comp (over scanner) may be at maximum? I've got such a nice place for
the printer, but my cable (another 1 meter) is ~10 cm to short...

And somewhere in the back of my head it's says that LPT had a max of
length without loosing massive data... Experienced that when the
scanner was to far away...

Thanks

Dirk

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

[This followup was posted to comp.periphs.printers and a copy was sent to
the cited author.]

Hi!

Just wanted to ask if anybody can tell me, how long an LPT-chain can
be... I've got a scanner attached to my computer and a printer attached
to the scanner.

The Scanner-Computer cable is about 1 meter long. That is perfectly
fine, I know. But can anybody tell me how long the way from Printer to
Comp (over scanner) may be at maximum? I've got such a nice place for
the printer, but my cable (another 1 meter) is ~10 cm to short...

And somewhere in the back of my head it's says that LPT had a max of
length without loosing massive data... Experienced that when the
scanner was to far away...

I think 10ft (about 3m) or so is the recommendation. Your 6ft (2m)
should be fine. Do use quality IEEE rated cables as they should have good
shielding. At work, we used to have a 50ft cable that worked fine,
although with a basic dot-matrix printer that only did plain text. It
depends on the quality of the cable, the data rate, and even the voltages
used. Although 5V is normal, I think it's rated to work at lower voltages.
I assume many newer computers probably use 3.3V.

 

[Bob Kos]

I've got 16 feet total (around 5 meters) with no ill effects using Belkin
IEEE 1284 cables. The computer is connected via a six foot cable to an HP
Parallel scanner. Daisychained is an Lexmark Optra S laser printer via a 10
foot extension cable.

No problems.

I've failed efforts like this in the past by using cheap cables. They're
not worth it.


Dirk Fust wrote in message ...