I got my new Compaq Presario computer that I bought at Best Buy home and started getting everything hooked up. One of the first things I noticed was there was no parallel port. On my old machine I had my LaserJet 4 laser printer hooked to the computer via the parallel port. But since the new computer had no parallel port, I wasn’t quite sure how to hook up my laser printer. I love my laser printer. I can print large amounts of pages for very cheap. Much cheaper than using the inkjet printer. My HP LaserJet 4 printer is a workhorse. It will keep going and going and going. So I definitely want to hook it up. I went online to Amazon.com and started searching for a USB parallel port adapter. I found a cable made by CablesToGo that had really good reviews. It was the “USB to DB25 IEEE-1284 Printer Adaptor”. Reading through the reviews, many of the people had used it to hook up their own HP LaserJet printers to computers running Windows 7. Many of the people said they plugged it in, turned it on and the printer was installed automatically. I also looked at buying a new parallel card for my machine. My new machine has several empty slots to install a new card. So I searched for parallel port cards and many of those had mixed reviews. Some people had problems getting them to run under Windows 7, having to install special drivers. After comparing the cards versus the adapter cable, I decide to go with cable. The cable only cost about $14 at Amazon with free shipping. Some of the cards were a little cheaper but not significantly so. I ordered the cable. The cable came on Friday in the mail. I opened it up, plugged it in and almost immediately the computer recognized the adapter. I plugged my LaserJet printer into the cable, and turned it on. Reading through the instructions, they wanted me to use the printer Wizard to install my printer to LPT1 port. So I did this, and tried to print a test page. Nothing happened. I uninstalled the printer and reinstalled the printer again to the LPT1 port, and printed a test page. Again nothing happened. I tried rebooting the computer printing a test page and nothing happened. I tried the LPT2 port and LPT3 port, but still couldn’t print the test page. I went to the CablesToGo website to search for any tech-support information regarding this cable but didn’t really find any answers. I did submit a support request. They have live chat at the CablesToGo website, but that’s during weekdays and during business hours. I was thinking I would have to wait for the support people to get back to me before I could install the printer. But I hadn’t given up, I kept searching for answers but found none. I reinstalled the printer on the LPT1 porp and tried printing a test page, but nothing came out. I right-click on the printer and found that I could select the port. I saw that my inkjet printer was on the USB001 virtual printer port. Out of curiosity I decided to set my LaserJet 4 printer to be hooked up to USB002 virtual printer port. I went to print a test page and the printer printed it. Very cool. So now I have a working LaserJet printer hooked up to my new machine which is one of seven. While the instructions were not completely accurate, the adapter cable works very well once I did get it installed correctly. I still haven’t heard back from the cables to go support team, but I just sent the request yesterday which was a Saturday, and I had kind of expect to hear something back tomorrow which will be Monday.

Posted by Rob in Computers on February 27th, 2010 | No Comments