Two PCs & one printer (General Comments on Networking)

Member Name: fred bloggs

Product:	General Comments on Networking
Date:	05/08/01 (582 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Works well

Disadvantages: Not cheap

Recently I wanted to connect two PCs to a single printer. This must be quite a common requirement, and I know there are various ways of doing it. I selected a Belkin Bitronics autoswitch for parallel cable connection, and when used in this mode it doesn't require a power supply. One of the computers required a 10 metre cable, and I had a lot of trouble tracking this down. I located it at misco, and incidentally their catalogue contains a very useful section on cables and connectors, with detailed diagrams so that you can be sure to get the correct one. In this case I needed a DB25 A-A male parallel cable. The system now works really well, with each PC appearing to have full use of the printer (but not at the same time, of course!). The only slight problem I encountered was that I had to change the BIOS set-up for the LPT1 connection on one of the computers to EPT, which was fairly straightforward. I hope these comments will be useful to other Dooyoo members who may be thinking of doing something similar.

Summary: