How to Buy a Printer Cable

At one time, you could buy a "standard" PC or Mac printer cable. But with changes in technology, there are now a variety of printer ports and cables in current use.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Printer Cables

1. Buy an IEEE 1284-compatible, bidirectional parallel printer cable to use with any PC printer and a parallel port.

2. Buy a generic bidirectional parallel printer cable to use with any PC and an old printer.

3. Buy a generic parallel printer cable to use with any PC and an old dot-matrix printer.

4. Buy a serial cable to connect a Macintosh-compatible printer to a 6000, 7000 or 8000 series PowerPC or any older Macintosh.

5. Buy a shielded Series-A to Series-B universal serial bus (USB) cable to connect a printer with a USB port to a PC that came with Windows 98 pre-installed or to connect a Macintosh-compatible printer with a USB port to an iMac or G3, or a newer Macintosh.

Tips & Warnings

• If your computer has a parallel port and a USB port, you can connect the printer to either one (if the printer has both too). If you only have one kind of port and the printer has the other, you can usually buy an adapter kit.
• IEEE 1284-compatible, bidirectional parallel printer cables are much faster than other parallel cables, but they are expensive.
• USB cables are faster than IEEE 1284-compatible, bidirectional parallel cables, and sometimes cheaper. However, sometimes the USB port can be "flaky" - a printer will work flawlessly with one person and not work at all with another, or there might be a minor problem that goes away after you restart the computer, and so on. This will improve as the technology continues to develop.
• Late-1990s Hewlett-Packard printers often work with cheaper, slower cables, but the manufacturer correctly advises that such compatibility can't be expected. Your old cable might work for simple jobs now and cause miscommunication problems in the future.
• Be skeptical about cables that claim to be considerably faster than others of the same type. Ask for a demonstration, with the supposedly faster cable tried first.
• Older Canon printers will only work with 6-foot cables.
• Expect odd or occasional printing problems with longer runs of cable, especially if you are daisy-chaining parallel-port peripherals.
• Expect inexplicable compatibility problems with USB printers, especially if the computer didn't ship with Windows 98.
• No cable will work if your computer doesn't meet the system requirements of the printer.