The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Beginners' Bytes: Part 15 Ron Wilby

Two Printers Too 

Some people have asked me whether the little LPT2 card I mentioned actually worked. If you didn't read it, this card gives me another parallel port (that's the plug on the back of the computer where you plug in your printer cable). It cost only about $20 but of course you must have a spare expansion slot on your motherboard into which you can plug this card. What's the motherboard? It's the largest board you will find inside your computer and will already have some expansion cards fitted into some of its slots. Well, the card works fine. If you're a real beginner, take care, but the job of adding any new card is really simple. Do it this way!

First, disconnect the power from the computer, then remove the outer case. Look at the back of the computer where the printer, monitor and mouse cables are plugged in. These cables connect to plugs (or sockets) which are parts of the expansion cards which contain the electronics needed to drive the printer, monitor or whatever. The expansion cards are at right angles to the motherboard and are electrically connected to it by the edge connector on the card being firmly pressed into one of the slots on the motherboard. They are anchored by a single metal screw at the back.

Installing Your Card

To install your LPT2 card, find a spare slot for it. Then, remove the single screw holding the appropriate blank metal cover at the back of the computer's case. Take the cover off and save it, just in case. Discharge any electrical charges on your fingers by touching the metal screws in the computer case. Now put your new card in position with its plug poking out the back of your computer and its edge connector poised above the slot where it is to go. When all is lined up, press firmly down on the card till it clonks fully into the intended slot. Anchor the new card by putting the screw you took out at the beginning of this exercise back where it came from. Now check to see if it works. Two simple ways to do that. One, if your BIOS displays lots of information on screen when you first boot up (switch on), you'll probably see that you have two parallel ports where before you only had one. Success! Second way, if you have DOS s.x, type MSD (for Microsoft Diagnostics) at the prompt, press Enter, and after a short delay, MSD will tell you whether you have two LPT ports. For full details on MSD, see PC Update, September 1994.

Configuring Your Programs 

OK, so now you've made another parallel port, and you can plug the second printer cable into the connector which came fitted to the LPT2 card you bought. Now, in theory, you can make any of your Applications programs use either of your printer ports (LPT1 or LPT2). Selecting a port selects a printer, because you've plugged the printer into that port. To do this, you'll need to get your original disks (or their copies) and reinstall the program, telling it which of the printers is the default. Trouble is, that locks a program to a particular printer, and changing it is a real drag!

With my word processor and database (at least), it's possible to change the printer port while the program is running. Thus, with difficulty (read with time lost), I can print part of something on one printer, then change to the other for the rest of the print job. Why would I want to do that? Who knows? Currently, the word processor has been told to output to LPT1 (the DeskJet). The database may need to use either printer, so I have to go into a setup routine every time I want it to print to LPT2 (for label printing). Leaving the program unfortunately, resets the default printer to LPT1. 

So, with all this hassle, life is not so simple. I'm now looking with interest at the old printer switches. My friendly dealer told me they were obsolete, he'd never be able to sell them now these LPT2 cards are available for half the price. Sorry, Steve, I think a switch behind the computer so I can put either printer on any program instantly would be an advantage. I better get down there and buy one before he reads this! Anyone want a cheap LPT2 card?

Murphy's Back

Last time I told you about my decision to downgrade my trusty old 9-pin dot-matrix printer to the label printing jobs, for which it is ideal. Our documents are now printed on the new HP DeskJet, with superb print quality. Real progress, says Ron. Enter Murphy!

It turns out, most of the documents we have on disk we can't print on the DeskJet because they were compiled using WordStar 6 (see Part 14 of this series, PC Update November 1994). To print the earlier episodes of this series I can either

1. Convert them to ASCII form. They don't look quite so good then, the formatting disappears.
2. Pull out some plugs or run the change program to tell WordStar to print to the old dot-matrix printer. They don't look quite so good this way either. Look out Steve, here I come for that printer switch!

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