Sharing a Printer

[Bisbee]

I am trying to share a printer between two pc's, they are not part of a network, just two separate systems I have sitting here side by side.

I bought an extraoridnarily simple (and astonishingly cheap) switchbox from Tigerdirect, it's an IBM with a manual dial on the front for A or B, and then three parallel ports on the back, one going to the printer and two going to the respective pc's sharing it.  I also got two  parallel Data Transfer Cable DB25M's to connect the pc's to the box.  It promises not to need additional power, and there is indeed no place to plug in a wall-wart to give it any.

Problem, as you might guess, is that I can't print from either of the pc's, just get an error message as if I wasn't hooked to the printer at all.

Do you think the box is defective, or is there some step in the process I'm missing - maybe I have to set up a network? (ugh).  Is it possible I got the wrong sort of cables?  They have the right pins to fit, I assumed that was all I needed to worry about.

tia for any help.

[MetalMilitia]

What operating system are you using on the PCs?

[5678]

one pc is windows 98 and the other windows xp.  I do not think the two systems would need to be compatible, they are not talking to eachother.  I am simply hoping to use a very primitive switchbox instead of having to move the parallel cable from one pc to the other, depending on which pc I'm printing from.  Both of them print very happily to my hp colorjet if the connection is direct.

[Bigheart]

Hi: I have an HP diskjet 5550 that i share between an Xp and a win '98 it has USB and Parallel cable, i load the software in each pc and kooked the USB to the XP and the parallel to the win'98. works great.

[Karen Miller]

Errr ... can you see my red face from here?   I had no idea there was a USB port on this printer.    Took your advice, it's working perfectly.  Anyone want to buy a $0.97 switchbox that probably doesn't work but is a real solid piece of craftsmanship?  You pay the postage.