Hawking HPS1P 10/100M Parallel Print Server

by Hawking Technology

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6.2 x 3 inches ; 15.2 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000DIESK
• Item model number: HPS1P
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #77 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > Networking Products > Print Servers
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 24, 2003

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Print over the Internet/Intranet to your home or office networked printer.

The Hawking HPS1P 10/100M Internet Print Server is a powerful and convenient tool to connect your parallel printer to a 10/100M Network. Use the HPS1P to connect your single parallel port printer to your home or office network. The Hawking HPS1P combined with the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) lets you easily connect to the HPS1P and print documents by specifying the print server's IP address. With IPP technology, printing over a WAN or the Internet becomes much easier. You can send a print job to a printer in another country just as easily as sending a print job to your home or office printer. IPP eliminates the need for fax communications between offices by simply printing an original document over the Internet and sending it from one office to another without the degradation of image and text quality that fax machines produce. With the HPS1P, your printer becomes a fully functional easy-to-use network print station.

Product Description

1 x 10/100Base-TX, 1 x Parallel - 10Mbps, 100Mbps

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Totally Smooth, February 3, 2004

By 

achtunggabey (Bountiful, UT USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hawking HPS1P 10/100M Parallel Print Server (Personal Computers)

I read the reviews here, but decided to try it out anyway, as it is the cheapest alternative I could find. Having read here and elsewhere about the need to disable WinXP's firewall, I tried to do that before I started the installation. However, I couldn't find it anywhere on my PC, so I decided to go ahead and see what happened without messing with the firewall.

I was surprised at how easily this mini server installed. It took me less than 30 minutes to install it on three WinXP machines and one Win2000. I followed the instructions exactly as they were printed in the booklet, and didn't have to do anything extra. Very smooth and very easy. I highly recommend it... at least from my experience with it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars There are at least two hardware revisions, August 5, 2005

By 

Alan Miller (Schaumburg, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hawking HPS1P 10/100M Parallel Print Server (Personal Computers)

I suspect part of the reason for the varied reviews is that there are at least two hardware revisions of this product. The older and larger ones don't support all of the features on the newer ones, can't have their firmware upgraded, and might as well not exist on the Hawking website. The newer (and physically smaller) revision has updates available for the firmware and software and has a larger range of features.
I didn't have any problems with either for plain LPR printing, but they also weren't going into really high-demand environments.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Functional but not real friendly - REVISED Fours Stars Now!, June 27, 2004

By 

Bruce J Bina (Minnetonka, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hawking HPS1P 10/100M Parallel Print Server (Personal Computers)

An update - I setup another one of these this weekend and it worked very well. This one I ordered from Amazon and it had more recent firmware and software. Additionally, the Hawking site had software and firmware upgrades that I could apply. Overall, much less tinkering, but still a little head scratching. For the price and ease of use with the new and improved interface, this is a pretty good deal.

I'd now rate this a 4 star product, but I can't change that.
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I setup this product for my home use, thinking I may use it for a client too. The documentation is pretty sparse and the CD manual is not easy to read. THe documentation says that this is a multi-ptorocol device. This is actually correct but not in the traditional sense. In this case it appears that multiple protocols are REQUIRED for the server to work. In my case I desired to just use TCP/IP in a windows XP environment. The device appears to follow the Microsoft lead of requiring some type of Netbios to be present.

Not all of the admin tools work under XP, but enough work to get it functional.

Overall for the cost, it works. It could be lots better but what really can you expect from a device the size of a printer dongle. (If you know what a dongle is, you have been in the business too long, like me. For the uniformed, it is a security device typically attached to the parallel port of a PC to counter software piracy. In this case, the "dongle" is on the printer, not the PC.)