Re: parallel card

[Joe Kohn <joko@GotSpam?crl.com>]

 >The difference between serial and parallel really showed up here,
 >about 4 times a speed difference,

I'm almost hesitant to say anything more, because part of me is just darn
curious to see how far people are willing to go in order to try to back up
a claim that cannot be verified, proven, replicated or explained. 

The fact of the matter is that data is sent out of a parallel port much,
much, much faster than it is sent out of a serial port. Typical parallel
transfer speeds approach 100k/sec; the IIGS serial port is 19.2k/sec. Even
when using the Harmonie high speed Serial port driver, the top transfer rate
is 57.6k/sec.

If you want to believe that using the IIGS serial port is as fast as using
a parallel port, go ahead, be my guest. It's not correct, but hey, this is
usenet. 

As the publisher of Harmonie, I will continue to recommend that anyone using
an HP printer with a IIGS should connect that printer to a parallel port.

Fortunately, for most, it's a moot point as very few HP printers these 
days even sport a serial connection. And, for good reason:

   "When IBM introduced the PC, in 1981, the parallel printer port was
   included as an alternative to the slower serial port as a means for
   driving the latest high performance dot matrix printers. The parallel
   port had the capability to transfer 8 bits of data at a time whereas the
   serial port transmitted one bit at a time."

Joe