Legacy Questions?

[Sathsayin]

I am doing a special home hobbie project that requires me to have 8 parrlel ports. I was wondering would 8 parrlel to usb connectors adapters put thru a usb hub bringing all 8 parrlel ports to one usb cable when plugged in work. (this is my main question) I do know you can have up to 128 usb ports on the bus at one time. But was wondering how would windows xp are vista are 7 for that matter go about it. I'm thinking for legacy purposes windows 2000 would be my best bet as i would be controlling the parrlel ports thru batch files becasue of the acpi issues and such. I will be using a 8 prebuilt relay controllers for a total of a 64 (bit) word output. These will be going to various plc's pic's and stepper motors all to be controlled thru 1 usb port. so my question is does windows have a maximum amount of parrelel ports it can control and would it labe them
lpt1
lpt2
lpt3
lpt4
lpt5
lpt6
lpt7
lpt8

And could i use several diffrent batch files to hook and unhook control to the diffrent ports at the same time.


some of this is oldschool legacy stuff so please help

Also i would appreciate info not just a yes are a no..... I need to know exactly why you guys would think it would are wouldn't to keep crapping and trolling down. although i don't mind answering any furthur questions you might have in order to get my questions answerd I wont answers not opinion's thanks in advance.

 

[Auzner]

Reading around about things it seems like it would work. You can have 8 parallel ports, but the USB to LPT adapter isn't as certain. The adapters would have to have some kind of controller in it to make it a true parallel port. And those would draw more power than usual, so you'll need powered ports. You'd have to be certain which adapter you're getting, because most of them are made just for printer commands. Safest bet is a PCI card, but then at most you get 6+1 unless you find 4 double port cards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrupt_Request
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314068

 

[obobski]

holy god spelling issues!

anywho, like Auzner said, the USB solution isn't so great (I've had them fail to even controler printers, depending on the printer and what functions it wants to use via LPT), so I wouldn't be all gungho to do that, the PCI card solution is a better bet, and you should be quite alright with that route

another question, depending on the age of your mobo, it may have an LPT header onboard, so that could net you another connector, theres also some LPT cards on newegg that do two or three ports, I'm sure theres some very expensive PCIe option as well, just look around for the cards you'll need, and you shouldn't have an issue getting it working