Re: USB printers again

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Harry Binswanger wrote:

> Are there USB printers that also take data directly from ethernet cables? I
> think I've heard of that. If so, even if they are not DOS printers (no
> parallel port), you could buy a hub and an ethernet card (both cheap now)
> and print to them from Xy over the network.
>
> Harry Binswanger
> hb@xxxxxxxxxxxx

You seem to be thinking of network printing via Print Servers. Such print jobs

can be intercepted and routed by your OS, and I think -- with appropriate setup
--
Xy would play ball. Some of the classic HP lasers, like my old HP-4, had an
option slot where you could plug in a network card. (Unfortunately, the one
that
came in my used HP-4 when I bought it was of the Token Ring variety, a now
outdated type that I don't think was ever much seen in a home office sort of
environment.) HP did make a regular ethernet card for my printer, but I'd have

to find one at Ebay, with prices much higher than would be worth it for me.
Probably only a very few high-end printers on the market today still allow for
an
internal printer-network card. However, there are some external adaptor boxes
you can buy at a reasonable price. Hawking is one mfr. that comes to mind.

I think it would hang off the back of your printer's Parallel Port (if it still
has
one -- doubtful for a current model), or a USB Port. The connection to your
computer would be over an Ethernet cable, which isn't going to have the length
limitations you see in most other types of cable. You could feed print jobs to

more than one printer this way, though each would have to have its own Print
Server card or adaptor. What I'm not clear on is whether one needs a 2nd.,
dedicated NIC in the computer, to handle this traffic. (Or maybe there is
another
one of these boxes hanging off the back of the computer. The Print Server
"box"
is only about the size of a pack of cigarettes.)  I don't think anyone is
going to
want to give up their broadband connection for this.

As you might expect, there are some advantages and some disadvantages to going
the network printing route. One relative minus is that you give up the ability
to
do a Print Screen.

Jordan