Trans PC Card - Questions


Frequently Asked Questions related to:


TRANS PC CARD - GENERAL

What is Trans PC Card?
 Trans PC Card - Universal Parllel Port is a Type I PC Card (PCMCIA Card) for Notebook and Palmtop PCs. It provides standard add-on parallel port to drive parallel printers and other parallel devices: JTAG chip programers and emulators, data acquisition, machine control, scientific measurmrnt systems and software protection dongles- hardware keys.


What does the Card do?
 The Card features:
  • add-on standard parallel port to support parallel printers or connection to parallel peripheral devices.
  • Ultra low power consumption.
  • Automatic installation with Win 2000 and XP, and easy installation with Windows Vista, Windows 9x, DOS and Linux.
  • Initialy it was developed to provide, beside parallel port functionality, error-free parallel transfer and management of files between PCs running DOS.


What is Type I PC Card?
 Type I PC Card ( PCMCIA) is the thinnest, the most preferable 3.3 mm, flat card.
Type II is 5.5mm and has belly on one or both sides to allow for room for older, thicker components or connectors.
Type III, the thickest, 10.5 mm is typically used for cards with built-in hard disks.
All types of cards have the same 68 pin PCMCIA connector.


What operating systems does the card support?
 The card is compatible with all operating system This is, Windows Vista, Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP, Linux with 2.2 or higher kernel and DOS. Under these operating system it operates as Plug and Play. With Windows 2000 and XP the card auto installs (it is automatically installed) after insertion into the PC Card slot of the Notebook PC. It is installed and driven by Microsoft drivers so there is no need for additional software support. For DOS we provide downloadable from our site parallel port enabler UPP.com


What is included with the standard package?
 A. Standard Package TDC303 includes:
  • Trans PC Card - Universal Parallel Port
  • User's Reference
  • 3 ft. Parallel Cable with standard parallel port.

Why does the Trans PC Card have such a low power draw, while other cards draw 200 and even up to 800 mA?
 The power draw of the PCMCIA card is the result of the cumulative power draw of the components built in the card and the standards with which the card function has to be compliant.
The main component of the Trans PC Card is the Trans Processor ASIC, which was designed with an emphasis on all available techniques to conserve the power. The power draw for transfer between PCs, for driving Iomega Zip drive and during printing with Pentax PocketJet printer does not exceed 5 mA! Due to such low power draw, Trans PC Card supports hot insertion/removal even with battery operated PCs like HP 200LX Palmtop.




UNIVERSAL PARALLEL PORT

What is the difference between standard DB25 female parallel port and UPP?
 Physically UPP is a much smaller port, it uses miniature connectors so it fits on the Type I PC card. It has 25 pins and provides all signal lines compatible with the standard parallel port. It has 10 output lines vs. 8 lines in standard parallel port, 10 input lines vs. 5, and the same number - 4 of control lines. The 25th line is a common ground. 10 input (real time status) lines allow for high speed of transfer from peripheral devices.
In addition to standard I/O mapped port, UPP is mapped to PCMCIA memory region so it is a memory mapped port just like SCSI, but without the need to draw the power required to drive SCSI.

In its default mode installed as a standard parallel port the UPP drives 8 data lines, reads real time status from 8 lines and provides 4 control lines. In Trans PC Card the UPP uses 10th line to power external devices connected to UPP. The 5 Volt power is extention of the PCMCIA 5 Volt power pins. Special version of Trans PC Card with LDO 3.3V/2.5V/1.8V voltge regulator is available on special request. The max. operational current is limited to 500 mA.


What is involved to upgrade the portable device to be compatible with UPP?
 Just replace the bulky parallel connector with the miniature UPP connector.
Signals are compatible with the old parallel standard.
If you need higher speed then you will have to put CMOS transceiver to add more signals. The rest of the design might be the same.

What speed of transfer can I achieve using the UPP on the Card?
 If you need to dump the data to the device on short distance of max 2m. without error checking protocol or fast read from the device then:
With existing software driving parallel port you can write or read with a speed up to 400 KB/sec a little faster then USB 1.1 (max 250 KB/sec).
But if you use card generated signals for continues writing or reading with automatic generation of handshaking signals than you will dump data at the rate of about 2MB/sec. (one byte per cycle of 500ns) As a general guidance you have to assume 5 times faster then with software generated handshake signals which requires 5 write/read cyles per byte.


UPP vs. USB2

How Universal Paralell Port - UPP compares with USB2?
 Conceptually USB2 is similar to FireWire IEEE-1394 and is based on the same serial transfer technology. The theoretical USB2 bandwidth is 480 Mbps FireWire - 400Mbps. The USB2 is in the process of development, is inmature and there are no many devices where we can measure real performance of this technology. From the information we gethered and from demo tests we can conclude as follows:

  • 2 times higher speed - Effective transfer rate of UPP (PCI board) is 2 times higher vs. comparable USB2 transfer.

  • 10 times longer transfer distance.
    UPP transfers up to 100m., the max. transfer distance of USB2 is 5m.

  • 50 times lower power consumption.
    UPP draws 5-10mA current @ 5V, USB2 port draws minimum 500 mA up to over 1 Amp. at 5V. (few times more then the main processor of the Notebook PC). Therefore USB2 has no future with Notebook PCs, digital cameras and other portable devices where the battery life - power consumption is becoming one of the most important consideration.

  • UPP has built-in in its hardware of Trans Processor "On-fly" invented by us transfer error elimination mechanism, so the software driving the UPP does not have to deal with error handling. With USB2 the error processing is totaly left for the software thus dramaticaly reducing overall effective transfer rate.

  • Compatibility:Unlike UPP, USB2 is not compatible with DOS and Windows 95. UPP is backward compatible with very popular standard parallel port, USB2 requires new interface built for USB2 compatibility with very problematic compatibility with previous USB1 and USB1.1 devices.

  • Emissions: Unlike UPP, USB2 due to its high power, high frequency transfer is emmiting extremely high level of electromagnetic emmissions especially in the range over 700MHz assosiated with the third and higher harmonics thus "out-interferring" (making un-operational) new under development prommissing new wireless technologies.


SOFTWARE PROTECTION DONGLES

Does the PCMCIA Trans PC Card-UPP support the software protection dongles?
 Yes, The Universal Parallel Port installs as a standard parallel port and supports all dongles (well, dongles of the companies which are in business).

There is a diference betwee fixed parallel ports and PCMCIA based parallel port. Our PCMCIA based parallel port is more flexible and supports P'nP operation, hot insertion/removal and variable base addresses.
For the dongle driver to find out installed parallel port base adress on the card, it has to support " base address variable scanning".
The developers of the software protection dongles are aware of that fact and provide the update to their dongle drivers to support that feature.
So before using the dongle please contact the software developer/manufacturer to update the dongle driver.

For the most popular dongles = Sentinel/Rainbow please download the latest version of the driver from: www.safenet-inc.com