The solutions that will work are:
1) 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.
2) If you have a laptop with a PCMCIA slot, the best solution is to purchase a PCMCIA card. We have
purchased and tested a Transdigital
Trans PC Card - Universal Parallel Port.
We highly recommend this product. You may purchase the product on the Transdigital web
site. Choose the TDC303 package. You may also purchase it from us if you are purchasing
a Data Logger CVF2 at the same time.
3) 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 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.
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.
When we purchased the TransDigital PCMCIA card, the sales email contained the following message:
"The Trans PC Card - Universal Parallel Port
for proper operation requires Notebook with fully
functional PCMCIA slot according the PCMCIA 2.1
standard with support of both voltages 3.3 and 5.0 Volt.
Therefore Dell Inspiron machines which supply
to the PCMCIA slot only 3.3 volts will not work properly.
Standard parallel port and parallel devices operate at 5 Volts.
All other brand machines are OK." In this case, you may wish to purchase the
Express Card shown above if your laptop has an Express Card Slot.
Please note that we do not have any affiliation, agreements, partnerships or
arrangements with Transdigital or 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.
The Quatech Express Card usually uses I/O port 3000 instead of 378.
If you have any problems using or installing these cards or if you purchased
the Quatech Express Card SPPXP-100, email technical support
at: support@givenscontrol.com