Advice needed for getting laptop PC Card or Docking Station - Old Tech Invo

[flynempire]

Hello, I am turning again to the community for some help. Where I work, they have a factory in Alabama that creates garments to protect clothes from sweat. These items are especially made for people who suffer from hyperhidrosis / excessive sweating issues, etc. The name of the company is Kleinert's. Our website is http://www.kleinerts.com

Now, they have a plotter that is used to create the patterns for the same or new garments they create but this plotter is from 1999-2000 era. Quite old by today's standards. They also use a proprietary CAD program from the same company that makes the plotter which connects to a laptop that is also from 1999-2000. As you can see it is very old tech.

Now the laptop is starting to fail which does not surprise me. The plotter connects to the serial port of the laptop and the software use a 25-pin Dongle which allows the program to work. That connects to the Parallel Port of the laptop. I have not seen this in person since i am in Miami and have not made the trip up there. I assume that is Parallel Port Cable though right?

So we recently purchased a new laptop for them at the plant. It is actually a refurbished Dell Latitude D630 from Dell Financial Services. This contains a serial port and I thought everything was fine, problem solved. Well no, the problem is the Dongle. I know I mentioned above the Parallel Cable but I did not know that until this morning. If I would have known this I may have gone another route. I also got the laptop with XP since it will not work with any Windows OS after that. I do apologize for this being long but I have some questions to ask that hopefully someone can answer.

I can purchase a PC card that allows a parallel port to be used on the laptop. Does anyone have experience with this and can recommend a brand for me? One obstacle I keep seeing is that many of these cards once plugged in are still seen as USB printing by Windows. We need one that creates a true LTP1 Port as these old programs are made to work with that only.

The other option is to get a docking station or port replicator that will come with a Parallel port already installed and that will or should be recognized by Windows as true LPT1. Can anyone confirm this for me? Would this be the safer option? Also is a port replicator enough or should we get the docking station? I should mention that the plotter is a Gerber Infinity 761 and the software is Accumark 7.6.3 also from Gerber.

This is what happens kids when you use a very old technology. I am at the last minute having to scramble and find what will work. Like jumping through hoops but I must find a solution.

Thanks for everyone's help in advance

[abecedarian paradoxious]

Typically, serial ports on laptops were a DB-9 connector and the parallel printer port was DB-25.

If the plotter connects to the serial port, it should be a DB-9 connector, not DB-25.

[abecedarian paradoxious]

I should prolly add that when I've used USB-Serial converters, in Windows, the device shows as a COM(x) port so I would expect a USB-Parallel adapter to show a LPT(x) port.

Whether it shows as LPT1: is hard to say, but that can usually be configured in the device driver / software or in Windows Device Manager.

[flynempire]

I was specifically told that a converter would not work. Also I am not in the plant so I need something easy for this worker to get it hooked up and ready again.

[flynempire]

http://www.usbgear.com/USBG-LPT-PCM.html

We went here and purchased that item. Was told that it creates true LPT1. We are testing today to see what happens

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

I would suggest looking at a dock with a Quatech Parallel Port (IEEE-1284) card, or something like a ThinkPad T60/61 with a dock, which have one serial and one parallel port.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky