So I have a GDSF7 and I have a parallel port cable going to my PC. It works great so I can load games without disks. Problem is I'm replacing this PC soon, and it won't have a parallel port. I know the USB to Parallel adapters don't work with it, but does anyone know if a PCI Card that has a Parallel Port on it would work? If nobody knows does anyone think it would have a chance of working? And would it work under Vista x64? I totally forgot about this when I was thinking about getting a new PC. I'm thinking if the PCI card won't work that I'll just need to get an old laptop. Anyone else have this problem?
I had this problem when I went to a Macbook. None of the PCI cards worked that I tried. I ended up getting my old laptop back and keeping it just for the parallel and serial ports.
Thanks, if none of the cards worked for you then I'm definitely going to look at getting an old laptop for the task.
The problem is usually that most parallel/usb adapters are designed only for printers, and so anything that doesn't work the same way won't work. The same is true of many newer pci cards for pc (or PC cards for laptops).
That's such a shame. I mean it just seems pointless. Does anyone even still use a printer that uses Parallel? I think the cards and usb adapters are a scam.
I think any expansion port card will do, you just need to be able to configure the base address. If that isn't an option but the program uses a dynamically linked kernal mode driver, you can do this: http://www.willem.org/cgi-bin/yabb22/YaBB.pl?num=1217381196/1
Most USB > Parallel ports only generally support single direction data and basic handshaking which is fine for a printer. You can find PC Card and Express Port 34 cards which will support Parallel ports completely. We discussed this in a different thread about a different device but it's the same thing... (click here)
