atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Computers & Programming Computers, Software, Accessories One Printer, Two Computers.

My wife's employer wants me to connect two computers to one printer via a USB hub with little or no out of pocket expense.

This is one of those jobs where the customer thinks it should be a 30 second job and I'm sure he's not planning on paying more than a minimum service call so before I go waste a lot of time as well as buying any adapters (on his dime) I would need just to try this I wanted to check here to see what kind of headaches I'm setting myself up for.

I told him I don't think it will work like that and that my guess is the printer is going to print garbage if it prints anything at all.

One of the computers is on the LAN while the other is not and he absolutely does not want it on the LAN. I'm not sure why.
Otherwise I would connect the computer with the local printer to the LAN and simply share it.

So, have any of you tried this? If so how did it turn out? What kind of problems, if any, did you encounter?

I've never tried that, but I think you're right - I'm pretty sure a hub is for sharing many devices on one computer.

How about this: web page

"Tripp Lites 4-Port USB 2.0 Printer/Peripheral Sharing Switch lets you conveniently share a printer, scanner, external hard drive, etc, among four PCs. Quickly switch between computers using keyboard hot-keys, mouse, or manually. Plug-and-play functionality makes installation a breeze. Icon task bar indicates switch status at a glance, and LEDs display which computer is active. Power drawn through the USB cables eliminates the need for seperate AC adapter."

Now that looks like it just may do the trick. Thanks! I think that's about as close to "little or no expense" as he's gonna get.

Your welcome! Looks like there are some 2 PC port ones as well, for even less - (down at the bottom of the page).

Happy printing!

- Matt

Bobby what you want is a USB Print Server. Just google it.

Gotta say, I'm really curious why it is not wanted on the LAN.

Is it supposedly security related?

Yeah, I have a customer like that. She has her accounting on one machine and she thinks it will get infected with viruses since the network also connects to the internet.

-Hal

Thanks Trace. I now have at least an idea of what I'll need.

He never explained why he doesn't want it on the LAN and I didn't push the issue. :shrug:

Glad to help Bobby.

I've had more than a few of the Internet-Phobs over the years. :bang:

Company I worked for here has a CPA customer that has 4 isolated computers. No modems, no network, and no moving info from one computer to another. And certainly no software through the door, grounds for termination! You get a virus or whatever on your computer, the CG had better be able to figure out how you got it innocently, or YOU ARE GONE! Apparently, he had a real serious problem once and doesn't want it to happen again. John C.

I stopped doing business with CPAs a long time ago. They are easily the dumbest people when it comes to anything technical and cannot be made to understand anything. They will listen to any huckster that says they can get the same value out of a 50 dollar product as a 1000 dollar product. Case in point, a CPA firm refused to listen to me and install a tape backup system. I warned them of the risk. They went with a 50 dollar CDRW drive and tried to use it for their backup device. Of course nobody could be bothered to fuss with it. Some time later the disk drive failed, no backup, $6000.00 in recovery costs. They blamed me. Best to avoid CPAs - oh and dentists are about as bad.

Don't forget lawyers.

I always thought that the bad thing about lawyers is that they can "Get Legal" at little or no cost to themselves. Yeah, yeah, if you do the job right, so what. How many of you guys were the successful bidder on a job against 3-4 other brands, and the customer wants the features that the other systems had, that your's doesn't have, after the job is complete? They swear up and down that your proposal said it would do it. They can't show you in the docs that accompanied your your bid, so THEN they say, "Well, you SAID .....". THAT's why lawyers scare me! You will probably win, but at what cost! John C.

So is the problem we're dealing with Lawyers or is it the general problem of sharing new USB printers on a network?

Please stay on topic.

I finally got a HP network printer. On sale at office depot for $250. Works like a charm. I don't think there is a device out there that actually lets two computers input to one printer...at least effectively.

So what is the latest you found out?

Use a cross-over cable to make a peer-to-peer network between the two computers. Install the printer on one computer, physically connected to it via USB then make it network shared. Add the shared printer onto the other computer.

I had a QMS (PS-10?) laser printer back when it had 3 inputs, parallel, serial, and appletalk. I had it hooked to my PC with a parallel cable and hooked my secretary up via the serial cable - it worked fine.

Are there still printers out there with multiple (parallel/serial/usb) inputs?

Sam

Sam,
There are some printers that still come with multiple ports. However, many cheap printers are coming USB only, and more expensive printers are coming USB and Network ready.

Parallel is being phased out, Serial I've only seen used on Thermal or Micro-Impact printers.

I've got a Canon ImageRunner 3570 (or is that 3750?) which has network (which is the only way we use it) parallel and USB. It's only a couple years old.

I had a customer who had a perfectly good laser printer. She had to junk it because she got a new computer and it didn't come with a parallel port.

Newegg sent a newsletter a few weeks ago raving about a network-connected USB hub that would allow sharing "ANY" USB device over the network, printers, scanners and flash drives included.

Rob: if you customer still has her printer, Best Buy (at least the Canadian ones) have a USB to Parallel printer converter cable for a reasonable price.

The only problem might be that if the new computer is Vista there may not be any drivers for the older printer. I had that problem with a HP inkjet and HP did not have drivers past XP.

If you don't have the exact printer driver for your model of printer, you can usually print using another driver. Try the Laserjet 4 or Laserjet5 or Laserjet 2100 driver or something similar that comes with Vista.

I discussed the options of using a USB/parallel cable and adding a parallel PCI card. The USB one has no guarantee of actually emulating LPT1 with hardware addressing of 378h, which I've found to be an issue with some drivers. The PCI card was $40, and the new printer was $60. And it was a color inkjet with individual color carts, so less waste.

Just buy a second printer. I just bought a new HP LaserJet p1015 for seven tenths of a Ben Franlkin and it prints 15 ppm.

Update. I gave the customer the options and he didn't want any part of it. He wanted me to go buy any adapters and cables I would need and just try it. I explained that by the time he pays for all of that crap he could have paid for a decent printer.
He didn't care, I bailed.

A few days later my wife came home and told me that the other office manager was trying to get the adapters and cables but she discovered "It is a pain in the butt". I didn't say a word.

Probably the best thing that could have happened. Now you don't have to deal with it whenever whatever gets inststalled breaks or they can't figure it out.

When he comes back to you, and he will, tack on an extra 1.75 hours for what you've put in so far.

I think I know the reason he doesn't want his computer networked, and I think I know why he doesn't want any device tht has the appearance (to a novice) of letting other people see what's on his PC.