Need to connect 2 different PC's to 2 different Printers. Please help

[ryeman]

I am presently taking night school courses in computer networking. Consequently, my father in law has asked me to do some simple IT consulting in his restaurant to save himself a few bucks and give me some practice.
Oh, here goes.

He needs to have 2 PC's set up. One PC to run windows 3.1 and one PC to run win9x. He needs the two PC's because the proprietary software he needs to run can only run in win 3.1. Also, he has other products that require win 9x, such as Office2000. I first recommended to run one PC with a dual boot option, but that was an impractical solution because he would have to continuosly soft boot his PC every time he needed to switch from one set of software to another.

Now what gets tricky here is that he wants to run the two PC's simultaneuosly and have the ability for both PC's to print to 2 different printers. ( dot matrix and a ink jet) Apparently applications on both PC's will require both printers.

The last thing he wants is to share a monitor between the two PC's because space is very limited where he needs to store the computers.

Here are some ideas I have had thus far.

1.
This is my father in Laws idea. Get three switch boxes. 2 of them will switch between the printers and one will switch which PC will be displayed on the monitor. To hook up the printers, following the path from the printer to the pc would be like this:
a)Y jack from printer 1, then 2 lines from printer 1. One line is sent to switcbox A and the other line is sent to switch box B, then line from switchbox A sent to PC 1 Parallel port, and then
b)Y jack from printer 2, then 2 lines from printer 2. One line is sent to switcbox A and the other line is sent to switch box B, then line from switchbox B sent to PC 2 Parallel port

That idea would work but I think it would be too confusing for his staff to figure out how to set all those switches.

2.
There are two products available that will do these things automatically for me. There is a 4 PC parallel to 2 printer automatic switcher and a 2 computers share one monitor, keyboard and mouse automatic switcher. These products look like the best alternative. However, somebody told me that the parallel ports may not be compatable with the win 3.1 parallel printer output. The products don't indicate that they are not compatable, they simply only say "windows or windows, 95, 98" compatable. I didn't think it would matter. once the print signal leaves the PC why would the switcher care whether it was a 3.1 signal or a win 95 driven signal????

3.
The last option I considered was upgrading the win 3.1 to win 3.11 for workgroups, then install 10base2 ethernet cards in each pc and set up a simple peer to peer network between the two pc's. then I would connect each of the printers to one pc and then enable print sharing on the 2 pc work group.

If anybody could help me out here I would appreciate it. I know this is a long message, but I just want to make sure I gave you a complete picture of what I want to do here. Thanks for reading and any advice you can provide.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

It certainly looks like you've done your homework!

I can only give an opinion here, since you've covered the 3 options I would have provided.

I would go with option 2.

Reasoning:

Option 1 is fiddly for the users, and option 3 is fiddly for the admin - and can be flaky.

Good luck with your project!

 

[edfair]

Lantastic. Allows DOS machines to talk to W9x machines. Allows W9x machines to talk to DOS machines. Peer to peer networking with simple network controls.
You would want version 8 and 10b2. But watch for the cable. You need rg58au.
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.

 

[ddaddy]

ryeman,
As I am in roughly an equivalent position careerwise I am curious as to the final solution. My opinion is option 3. Any administration will be dicey at first until all users are up to speed and you have worked out all the kinks. Win 3.11 is useable and familiar to the group. Remember it has no native TCP/IP stack so you will have to use Netbeui. But the peer to peer is quite workable and your printer access will be much simplified. Let us know how this has concluded.

 

[ShaithisDanoveur]

Doing this is fairly straight-forward.

Use the Win95 box as your print server. Get a secondary parallel port for it and hook both printers to it.


Create a peer-to-peer network using older 10base2 or combo ethernet cards (they're about $19 a piece). If you use 10b2 don't forget your terminators, and for 10baseT you need a crossover cable since you're going hubless.

Get a nice switchbox, not a clunky clicker type. Reason being - they handle video signals better, and it's easier to cover the facia in plastic coating (just as the kb and mouse will be) so wet hands do no dmg. They also handle mouse and keyboard signalling better.

Share the printers from the W95 box, and the W3.1 box can see them - just use short share names and make sure W3.1 drivers exist first - moot point otherwise.

And have him check his vendor - there's many software POS packages designed for the food industry that run on software a lot more recent than W3.1

And don't forget as well - older hardware has Y2K concerns that must be addressed.

 

[Guest_imported]

I had a very similar problem and a very simple solution (which can be very good if like me you have a technophobe in the house) - You can buy at computer fairs and some other shops, and probably online if you look around, a single manual switch box for this. (I bought mine In December 2000 so they are still around) It has four sockets on the back, two for the two PCs and two for the two printers. PC "A" is connected to Printer "A" and "B" to "B" until you flick the single switch on the front of the box, when "A" is conected to "B" & "B" to "A".

A very low tech solution which will work on any system under the sun.