LPt ports

[Guest]

I have a question. I hooked up a local lpt printer and it installs it on lpt1
but it will fail at printing. I have to switch it to lpt2 to make it print.
The first question is i know what lpt1 is but what are lpt2 and 3 used for?

 

[JS]

Additional ports are there for a second printer or other parallel port
devices.
Have you checked the LPT1 BIOS settings (ECP, EPP) to match what the printer
manual suggest?

JS

 

[Guest]

but how can you plug in another parallel cable for a second or 3 printer if
all computers have only one parallel port

 

[JS]

Misunderstood, though you had multiple physical ports available.

JS

 

[John John]

I have a question. I hooked up a local lpt printer and it installs it on lpt1
but it will fail at printing. I have to switch it to lpt2 to make it print.
The first question is i know what lpt1 is but what are lpt2 and 3 used for?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/106681

You could have add on cards and have more than one physical parallel
port on your computer, that is not an unusual setup. You could also
have a local printer on a sole parallel port but still use other ports
to print to other printers, like a network printer or a shared printer
on another computer. You would then use the NET USE command to map or
redirect an lpt port to the printer, some software allows you to select
which port to print to.

John