Can I share a scanner?

[woggie]

Ok, folks - here's another one.

I have a home network consisting of a -

HP Pavilion 7360 Pentium MMx 200Mhz, 128MB RAM, running Windows 2000, SP2, build 2195

- connected through a 3Com HomeConnect 5-port mini-hub to a -

clone Pentium 100Mhz, 32MB RAM, running Windows NT 4.0, SP5

I have a UMAX 2000P (Parallel interface) scanner attached to the NT machine.

Can I install the scanning software on the Win2k machine and share the scanner from the NT machine?

Cheers, woggie

 

[edfair]

Unlikely. Software will be looking to the hardware port which is not sharable with any network software that I've seen. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

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Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[woggie]

Thanx fer yer response, edfair -

But a printer connected to the parallel port of one PC can be shared with others on the network. The UMAX is connected to the parallel port on the NT machine. It only makes sense to me that that it should be shareable. I'm not sure what you mean by "hardware port".

Cheers, woggie

 

[edfair]

Yes, a printer can share. But the signals from the print job go to a printer control section of the operating system of the computer with the printer and then to the printer port, not directly to the printer port hardware.
The scanner uses the hardware directly to read data in, so any scanning would have to be on that machine.
I'll have to think a while to figure how to explain it better. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[woggie]

Thanx, edfair - So what you're saying is that the two OS' don't have the capability to share the activity on the parallel port as anything but printer activity, right?

Do you think an "auto-switch" would work as well for a scanner as for a printer?

I actually have the parallel port scanner connected to the parallel port of the NT machine, then connected, taking advantage of the pass-through capability of the scanner, to a Belkin Bitronics auto-switch and from there to the printer.

The W2K machine, similarly, has a parallel port Zip drive connected to its parallel port and then a connection to the Bitronics switch, again taking advantage of the Zip drive's pass-through capability.

While I admit this is sort of like a wall-socket octopus, it works just fine. I'm just wondering how it would be to put the scanner on the other side of the switch:

NT <--> switch <--> scanner <--> printer

... and maybe even share the zip drive that way as well, as in:

[tt]NT <-->][/tt]
[tt] ][/tt]<--> switch <--> zip <--> scanner <--> printer
[tt]W2K <-->][/tt]

That's probably going to confuse the systems pretty well isn't it.

How about adding an additional parallel card to each machine and sharing the scanner through an additonal auto-switch?

Cheers, woggie

 

[edfair]

May work. I understand about the switches. One of my systems has 6 to shuffle stuff around.
The problem may come with the auto switch. Normally used for printers it won't have all signals both ways.
Now you take a mechanical switch, it will work. Of course the control panel to do the stuff would probably run a small railroad. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.