A New Parallel Port PC Card For the 100LX & 200LX

Original Draft by Craig Payne
The HP 200LX palmtop is a PC "clone" that you can hold in the palm of your hand. But unlike most clones it lacks parallel printer port. With a right PC Card (PCMCIA card) you can add this vital port. A true parallel port not only allows you to connect directly to a parallel printer but also gives you access to the many peripherals on the market designed to connect to a PC's parallel port.
In the May/June 1996 issue of the Palmtop Paper I reviewed the SPP-100 card from Quatech. As the article describes the Quatech card has a few flaws which reduces its usfulness. Quatech is working to correct those flaws and bring their whole line of PC Cards to the 200LX. But now is the alternative on the market.
Trans Digital of Fremont, CA is now shipping their Trans PC Card Universal Parallel Port.

The Trans Digital card has a number of advantages over the Quatech card. The big one is that it doesn't lock-up the palmtop on power up. In addition the cable is more versatile nd the card "enabler" software is included in the card's built-in ROM disk along with a "Laplink" (tm) like file transfer program. The Trans Digital card is also a Type I (thin) PC Card while the Quatech card is a Type II (thicker) card. Oh, and it is cheaper too. Trans Digital was offering an introductory price of $119 compared to the list price of 195 for the SP-100.

Description
The Trans Digital package includes the Type I card, a user's manual, floppy and cable. The detachable 40 inch (100 cm) cable connects to the card through a 25 pin connector. The other end terminates in a pair of male and female 25 "D" connectors mounted back to back. If you want to connect to another PC you use the male connector (this is only usful with the provided file transfer software as far as I can tell). If you want to use a cable designed to plug into PC's parallel port you use the female connector. The cable will plug directly into a parallel Iomega Zip drive - just remove the captive thumb screws from the cable and plug the female connector into the male connector on the back of the Zip drive and leave the bulky Iomega cable at home.

Installation
To use the Trans Digital card just insert the card into 200LX slot. The card built-in ROM drive will appear as drive A. There are five files on the card: TM.COM, TM.HLP, TRANS.COM, README.TXT and CIC.COM. TM.COM and TM.HLP make up the "point and shoot" Transfer Manager program while TRANS.COM is a server-only program controlled with command ine parameters. The README.TXT file describes the contents of the card and how to use CIC.COM to enable the card parallel port on laptops and palmtops. On the 200LX CIC.COM enables printing to the parallel port under DOS and System Manager Applications.
I tested the card's parallel port in a number of ways. I was able to print from DOS and System Manager applications to my parallel printer. And Laplink 3 worked fine, transferring 480,000 bytes in about 12 seconds. And the Iomega Zip drive worked flawlesly with the standard DOS "guest" driver. The Trans Digital card is the parallel port PC Card of choice for your HP Palmtop.

Draft for The HP Palmtop Paper, October 7, 1996.