Customer Reviews

LAVA COMPUTER Parallel-PCI

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

BEWARE! Does not support legacy port addressing (278h, 378H, etc.) in Windows XP/2000 even though they claim to in the product description. Once you open the box and read the manual you'll find this, in the release notes- "In standard installations of Windows 2000/XP, the I/O address cannot be changed to a legacy address."

Appears to be marketed under several names, you can recognize it by the claim to support legacy port addresses, and "Up to 3x FASTER than standard ISA or motherboard EPP ports"

Card installs under Windows XP but won't allow ports to be changed to x278 or x378 as advertized. Consequently, won't work with ANY of my security dongles (Sentinel, GlobeTrotter, FlexID, SafeNet). Kinda of a rip-off, in that this card is MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE than other cards of this type and won't perform in legacy mode as stated. If you just need an LPT3 port at a PCI address, like xE800, then buy a cheaper card, there are many for under $10 that work as good as this one.

Works perfectly... that's all I care about! My son installed it in a snap. Good price at Amazon!!

After trying several cheap parallel port adapters that didn't work either with my Compaq computer or with my printer (Xerox Docuprint P8), and that didn't have digitally signed drivers, this adapter finally worked.

Pros:
- Performance
- Ease of installation
- Digitally Signed XP drivers
- Warranty

Cons:
- Price

I was unable to get it to work with ASUS P5B Premium Vista Edition MB. Neither Windows Xp or Windows Vista recognized the card. Returned the card to Amazon. Excellent return procudure.
Update: Replaced with a StarTech PCI1PECP and had the same problem. After further investigation I determined that the card could not physically fully seat into the PCI slot. I loosened the screws connecting the IEEE-1284 plug. This gave it enough play to fully seat and solved the problem. Perhaps this solution might have worked with the LAVA card.