The solutions that will work are:
1) If you have a laptop with an Express Card slot, the best solution is to purchase an Express Card. We have
purchased and tested a 34 mm Quatech
SPPXP-100 EPP Parallel Port Express Card.
We highly recommend this product. You may purchase the product on the Quatech web
site or from their many resellers. You may also purchase it from us if you are purchasing
a Data Logger CVF2 at the same time. See the application note below.
2) If you have a laptop with a PCMCIA slot, the best solution is to purchase a PCMCIA card. We have
not yet purchased and tested a Quatech
Quatech SPP-100 Parallel Port PCMCIA Card
but based on our experience with their Express Card, we do not hesitate to recommend this product.
You may purchase the product on the Quatech web site or from their many resellers.
You may also purchase it from us if you are purchasing
a Data Logger CVF2 at the same time. See the application note below.
3) Purchase a docking station that connects to the laptop PC's bus (not a USB port). This normally
means you must purchase it from the laptop manufacturer. This, however, reduces the
portability of the entire system.
4) If you have a desktop with an open PCI slot, the best solution is
to purchase a PCI parallel port card. There are many suppliers and the cost is
very low. You may purchase one from us if you are purchasing
a Data Logger CVF2 at the same time.
If you purchase the card through us, we will test it prior to shipping.
Please note that we do not have any affiliation, agreements, partnerships or arrangements with Quatech whatsoever. We are merely recommending a product that works with our product. There may be other suitable products available but they must work with direct "port i/o" (to port 378H for example) and the 3 I/O addresses of the standard parallel port must fully comply with the parallel port standard. The product does not need to support EPP or bi-directional standards. A standard parallel port is recommended. Interrupts (IRQ) are not used by Analyse-Plus and are not required.
If you have any problems using or installing these cards for use with a
Data Logger CVF2 or if you purchased
the Quatech Express Card SPPXP-100 or Quatech PCMCIA SPP-100 card, email technical support
at: support@givenscontrol.com
The Quatech Express card uses a non-standard i/o port address such as 3000 or 2CF8 and requires a
non-standard method of setting this in Analyse-Plus. The next version will allow
direct entry of this value.
Application Note for Quatech Express Card:
When you plug in the Express card, Windows or the
driver seems to do some checking into what is connected. If you have the Data Logger (DL) connected
to the Express Card via the included cable when you plug the Express card into your computer,
the PT LED will flash on and off approx every 5 sec. During this time, if you click "Connect"
in Analyse-Plus, it will attempt communication but Windows or the driver will disrupt communication
with its "checking". Depending on what you were doing and especially if you were doing a
standalone collection, this can cause some problems and loss of data. To avoid this, wait until
the PT LED stops flashing before clicking on "Connect". This is typically 20-30 sec. You can instead
leave the DL unconnected during this time but the same thing happens - you just don't have the PT
LED as an indicator of when the "checking" is done. In this case, merely verify that the PT LED is
not flashing before clicking on "Connect" in Analyse-Plus. This is a problem specific to the Quatech Express Card.
The TransDigital PCMCIA card and true (built-in) parallel ports don't exhibit this behaviour.