[Ham-Computers] New Scanner and Printer Needed

Sun May 8 17:32:10 EDT 2011

Hi Phil,

GREAT to hear from you my friend.

I knew that about the USB ports! I am so used to thinking in terms of a 
serial port or a parralel port that it never crossed my mind.

This Compaq business computer has two USB on the front and four more on the 
rear.

The Compaq 450 MHZ computer that I use for DOS also has two USB ports on the 
front under a flip up door.

The 2.8 GHZ custom built computer that Aaron Hsu built for me eight years 
ago has six USB ports, a serial port and at least one parallel port. It runs 
Windows 98 SE, which I dearly love. Very secure!

It also accepts short and long cards. Has a high speed CD/DVD read/write 
drive with four layer capability. A 100 meg zip drive, 3.5 inch 1.44 meg 
drive and a 20 Gig HD. The biggest HD Windows 98 will accept is thirty GHG. 
But finding a 30 Gig HD is next to impossible. So it has a 20 Gig instead.

It is one heck of a machine!

I just got it working again after the wizard that cost me $80 per hour 
screwed it up! An ego issue ... Did not know about DEC speech cards or about 
synthetic speech and the related software. But he would not ask me! The end 
result was i did not pay the company and the computer remained useless for 
over a year. It was my audio/video machine and had all the master 
directories for the HHRP video etc. on it.

I do have a question for you Phil.

This Compaq 3.0 GHZ Windows XP HE system has an expensive CD/DVD read/write 
drive. It is capable of doing a four layer DBD. However, I just discovered 
it will not play a music CD.

Why did I just find this out? Simple. You know me, I do not use a computer 
for playing music!

Today I was checking a stack of unlabeled CDS and DBDS and thought something 
seemed wrong. I got a Floyd Cramer commercially done CD out and put it in 
the drive. It did not play.

Now I think I remember Aaron telling me that he set this machine to not 
automatically play a CD or DVD. I had to manually start them.

I looked the software over and did not find an program for playing CDS as 
such. Nero is on there and it does have a 'play CD' option, but it did not 
work.

I looked at Media Player and Media Player Classic, but niether of them 
appeared to have a CD player as such.

Is there some Windows XP HE system program that I should use to play a CD?

Thanks Phil.

Unrelated: If you did not get a copy of the five Mothers Day items I posted 
on various lists, let me know. I would be delighted to send them to you for 
your wife. Even though Rachel did not have any children, she is still a 
wonderful woman and should be treated special on Mothers Day too.

Love Ya Buddy,

Duane

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Philip (KO6BB)" <ko6bb at sbcglobal.net>
To: "Computers (or other) used for amateur radio, communications,or 
experimenting" <ham-computers at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, May 07, 2011 10:10 PM
Subject: Re: [Ham-Computers] New Scanner and Printer Needed

> Duane,
> To the best of my knowledge, nearly all modern printers and scanners are
> USB and it will probably be difficult to find a parallel port one.  The
> advantage of the USB is that most modern computers have a plethora of
> them (My desktop has 6 of them, 4 on the back and two on the front).
> And if that isn't enough, it's easy enough to plug a 4 port USB hub into
> a port and quickly obtain three more ports that way. Although all my
> ports aren't in use, I 'remote' one port for some remote devices like
> wireless keyboard/mouse, extra DVD burner and so forth.
>
> Running XP you shouldn't have any problem with the machine recognizing
> your printer/scanner.  While desktop this does have a parallel port
> along with a serial port (in addition to the 6 USB and Firewire ports) I
> haven't used the parallel port at all.
>
> You might seriously consider buying a combination scanner printer as
> there are a lot of them available in all price ranges.  Besides the
> usual scanning, printing etc, they usually have a one button "copy"
> function making them convenient for copier use.
>
> 73 de Phil,  KO6BB
> http://www.qsl.net/ko6bb/   (Web Page)
> http://ko6bb1.multiply.com/ (My OTR Blog)
> http://cbsmysterytheater.multiply.com/ (My CBS
> Radio Mystery Theater Blog)
>
> RADIOS:
> Yaesu FT-2000 Xceiver for "hamming" and LF Beacons.
> National NC-183 16 Tube Receiver (circa 1949)
> Zenith "American" Royal-7000 Transoceanic. (circa 1970)
> Realistic DX-380 Digital Portable.
>
> Central California
>
>
> On 5/7/2011 2:35 PM, Duane Fischer, W8DBF wrote:
>>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> It is past time for the old blind dude here to upgrade some computer
>> equipment! I need a good color printer and a good color flatbed scanner.
>>
>> Since I have not been paying attention to the market, as what I had 
>> worked
>> fine, I now need your suggestions as to what is good and reasonably 
>> priced.
>>
>> The system is a Windows XP Home Edition at 3 GHZ with slightly over 1 GHZ 
>> of
>> RAM.
>>
>> I assume that I can plug the scanner into the parallel port of the 
>> computer
>> and the printer into the back of the scanner?
>>
>> Any suggestions you might have for a good quality color printer and color
>> scanner would be appreciated.
>>
>> If it matters, the color printer will be used exclusively for printing in
>> color! All text will be done by reliable old HP 4P Laser printer. She is
>> sixteen years old and working like she was still new!
>>
>> Thanks for your learned suggestions!
>>
>>
>> Duane Fischer, W8DBF - WPE8CXO
>> E-Mail: dfischer at usol.com
>> Hallicrafters web site: www.w9wze.net
>> HHRP web site: hhrp.w9wze.net
>>
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