Parallel to Serial or USB to Serial

[pelicans]

The serial port is fading fast and I have a BC796D Scanner and a Toshiba A70 Laptop with a PC Card Slot, three USB -2 ports, and a Parallel port.

The emulated version of a serial port that is generated off the PC Card is Virtual and runs off the frequency of a chip (and doesn't work well). That leaves the USB ports (which are not supported by the ARC250 software, and the Parallel port (which I don't use because I print over the ethernet LAN.

Is it possible to get a adapter for the parallel port that goes from: Parallel to Serial (9 pin) for the useful communication to the BC796D Scanner from the Laptop?.

Regards, Greg

 

[Butelsoftware]

ARC250 1.12 supports USB ports, previous versions may have problems with USB converters.

Gommert

 

[JnglMassiv]

Certainly, there are parallel/serial convertors but I don't know how the scanner software will like it. This one is a little pricier than you might first suspect, too.

 

[pro92b]

The emulated version of a serial port that is generated off the PC Card is Virtual and runs off the frequency of a chip (and doesn't work well).

What kind of card is this? The PCMCIA cards from http://www.socketcom.com/ are real serial ports. I've even used them in DOS with Trunker and had excellent results. There are always some on auction at Ebay.

 

[Voyager]

The serial port is fading fast and I have a BC796D Scanner and a Toshiba A70 Laptop with a PC Card Slot, three USB -2 ports, and a Parallel port.

The emulated version of a serial port that is generated off the PC Card is Virtual and runs off the frequency of a chip (and doesn't work well). That leaves the USB ports (which are not supported by the ARC250 software, and the Parallel port (which I don't use because I print over the ethernet LAN.

Is it possible to get a adapter for the parallel port that goes from: Parallel to Serial (9 pin) for the useful communication to the BC796D Scanner from the Laptop?.

Regards, Greg

USB to serial is more common. There should be serial port cards you get get for the PCMCIA port that are true serial ports.

Joe M.

 

[pelicans]

The type of PC Card or Card bus adapter I was having problems with was from ST Lab, model C-130, RS-232 Serial Port.

Thank you all for your info

 

[doug408]

ARC250 USB support

ARC250 1.12 supports USB ports, previous versions may have problems with USB converters.

It's really worth taking a look at this. I had a lot of frustration with ARC250's earlier versions over the USB connection not working, and exchanged quite a few messages with Gommert at Butel. Changing drivers, etc. seemed to be marginally better in some ways, but really just masked the real problem. ARC250 version 1.12 made a huge improvement.

Although I'd be a lot happier if Uniden would put direct USB connections into their scanners, ARC250 1.12 at least provides a tolerable workaround for the rapidly growing number of computers without serial ports until that happens.

 

[imcleish]

I have a compaq laptop and use a usb to serial port connector for arc 246. the only issue I have is that if the port seems unresponsive, i must go into the drivers properties and uninstall the usb connection(root hub) and then have the computer check for new hardware. a small inconvenience for the advatage of computer use though, and it only takes 30 seconds. if you continue to have trouble with the usb or pcmcia connection, check the properties of the port and see that you have unchesked the automatic power saving feature which turns of the device. I know for wireless networking users, they will often have this problem, and this is the fix.