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General discussion

dot matrix printer

Dec 12, 2009 10:45PM PST

i want to add a wide carriage dot matrix printer to my workstation so that i can print multipart forms.I already have a color ink-jet printer attached to the computer using IRQ7.I have no idea of which resources to assign to new printer.can anyone help me?

Discussion is locked

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Are you adding another parallel port?
Dec 13, 2009 6:46AM PST

The old convention was LPT1 on IRQ and LPT2 on IRQ5 and these were set with jumpers on the IO card but you didn't mention your OS or how you were going to attach the printer.

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I mean
Dec 13, 2009 4:07PM PST

Yes that is what I exactly mean.If you answer my question I really appreciate this.

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Ok, then you buy the IO card
Dec 13, 2009 6:40PM PST

You still didn't mention anything about other hardware or OS so I'll presume some version of Windows and fairly recent architecture. You're likely going to be buying a PCI add in card so Windows can handle the interrupt issue. If you have an old ISA system, it's going to be jumpers but ISA is dead. What I can't tell you is if Windows will have drivers for your selected dot matrix printer but port configuration with PCI is generally plug-and-play. Good luck.

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Switch box
Dec 14, 2009 12:43AM PST

On top of the advice Steven has given you, you may want to consider a "port switch box". The idea is you route your cabling there and system. You then can select which ptr. you want output to go to as you mentioned an inkjet as well. That way you don't need a a 2nd LPT card but you could if what I mentions doesn't work but it should. Its just another way to resolve your problem. This was the old way it was approached when the issue of multiple printers came about.

tada -----Willy Happy