SpritesMind.Net

I have been looking for one and I noticed that they all need Printer Ports to work? What if I don't have one, what do I do?! Cause I really wanted this one:

http://products.genny4ever.net/megacart_v1x.html

But how can I use it on my computer if I do not have Printer Ports?!

well, if you have a laptop then it's a dead end.

If you have a desktop, most mother board got a // header but not the external connectors. Check first if you mother board got a parallel header
then you'll just need to find a parallel port extension (bundle with a serial connector).

i found mine on a really old pentium class computer.

You can buy a PCI addon card with LPT port.

Or better, don't buy a PC without LPT port. I chose my new PCs mobo especially because it had everything, and it had also LPT and COM ports (yay, Doom on serial cable )

TmEE co.(TM) wrote:Or better, don't buy a PC without LPT port.

That equal to 'don't buy modern PC or notebook'. I think, much simpler way is just not discard one old computer with LPT (or found one, they very cheap for now).

Btw, USB-LPT converters exists, but I don't think they can work with anything else than printers.

i just bought a new desktop computer. It was into parts. before buying the motherboard, i carefully check to be sure to have a // header (totaly needed for md dev). That's why i didn't buy a branded computer like HP.

but modern computer mostly have a // header on the motherboard, so no need to have the old one only for it

WOW I just checked it might actually have a port on the back! I need a picture though to make sure anybody got one?

1magus wrote:WOW I just checked it might actually have a port on the back! I need a picture though to make sure anybody got one?

If your laptop has a female 'D' connector with 25 pins then youre in luck

Shiru wrote:That equal to 'don't buy modern PC or notebook'. I think, much simpler way is just not discard one old computer with LPT (or found one, they very cheap for now).

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mot ... uctID=2607

I don't think it is very outdated piece in my new PC.

TmEE co.(TM) wrote:I don't think it is very outdated piece in my new PC.

You don't think about future and other people. Today some desktop PC's and almost all laptops already have no LPT. In future no computers will have this port at all. Exactly same happened with ISA bus some years ago.

Shiru wrote:

TmEE co.(TM) wrote:I don't think it is very outdated piece in my new PC.

You don't think about future and other people. Today some desktop PC's and almost all laptops already have no LPT. In future no computers will have this port at all. Exactly same happened with ISA bus some years ago.

Yeah. They call it "progress". But, for seamless pass through this barrier, they made a PCI card with LPT and COM controllers. It's cost about 5$-10$. And it's give you more freedom, than onboard ports does.
About this one - seems it have one LPT port.

There are also serial PCMCIA cards available, so you can also use it on a laptop that's got that expansion bus (most have it), but they're a bit expensive (at least the prices they were selling them for that I found on the net).

From what I understand, there's only one parallel PCMCIA card for a laptop. It's very expensive, and it's pretty pointless to get one, seeing as PCMCIA is itself being phased out by ExpressCard. Most new laptops no longer support PCMCIA.

HardWareMan wrote:You can buy a PCI addon card with LPT port.

That works fine if all you want to do is talk to a printer.

Most stuff that does bit-banging on the parallel ports wants to talk directly to the interface chip, and has problems with PCI LPT cards because they don't use the "standard" port addresses. You can forget about it entirely with USB adapters. And I've heard that recent PCs are going "legacy free" and only have a PCI LPT port.

I suppose it's possible that someone could come up with a protocol where the device actually pretends to be a printer and uses the OS-level I/O calls to do the download. It wouldn't be an entirely bad idea if you're mostly downloading to something, with the status lines being used for a slow data back-channel. But that's not normally what's done.

I use OS X, where there isn't a legacy parallel port to lean on, so I normally use a floppy-based game copier and a USB floppy drive when I need to go to the real hardware. It's slow, but it works. Of course the ultimate would be a dev board with RAM, Ethernet, and a flash chip to boot from, plugged into the side port.

So, lets build one Or just get a bit older PC and/or laptop for nothing and use it instead. I have 5 PCs in my room......