Enable bidirectinal support on gigabyte ep45-ud3r

dobro

August 22, 2011 6:59:23 AM

Hope i'm in the right forum, apologies if i'm not.

I recently tried to install an older but basically new HP T45 printer/fax/scanner on my system. It prints, but will not scan, it is not recognizing bidirectional support. I've tried two 1284-1994 cables. I have the factory header card with lpt1 and com port. (gigabyte told me i need a header card, duh, and hp is useless). As per the instructions lpt1 is set to ECP, but i see nothing in BIOS about bidirection. When i boot, i get all kinds of classic messages telling me it's not talking and won't work, so the system knows. i've played with the settings (always use an interrupt, never use, enable legacy, etc., doesn't seem to make any difference, still prints fine to my Brother 5370 laser and to the HP T45 inkjet, just won't scan.

System

Gigabyte EP45-UD3R mother REv 1.0
Intel Q9550
4 gig 1066 ram
Radeon 1gb pci Video
Dual WD 640 hard drives
Samsung DVD
FACTORY lpt and com header

What am i missing?
Any suggestions, comments, or questions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance, you guys are great!

More about : enable bidirectinal support gigabyte ep45 ud3r

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Hawkeye22

August 22, 2011 12:03:43 PM

There should be nothing in the bios for bidirectional support. ECP already supports bidirectional data. I have the same board as you, except mine is rev 1.1. What do you mean 1284-1994 cables? You need a birdirectional parallel printer cable in order to use bidirectional support. If you installed the correct printer/scanner drivers, the option for bidirectional support can be found there.

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dobro

August 22, 2011 5:19:10 PM

thank for responding!

the 1284/1994 cables are bidirectional. i'm using the latest driver i can find, from hp, ojT_ENU_xp1305

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Hawkeye22

August 22, 2011 6:55:33 PM

No problem, i'm not sure why the bi-directional option is grayed out, but I'm sure it's probably the driver.

Enhanced Parallel Port (EPP) is a half-duplex bi-directional interface designed to allow devices like printers, scanners, or storage devices to transmit large amounts of data while quickly being able to switch channel direction. EPP can provide up to 2 MByte/s bandwidth, approximately 15 times the speed achieved with normal parallel-port communication with far less CPU overhead.

Extended Capability Port (ECP) is a half-duplex bi-directional interface similar to EPP, except that PC implementations use direct memory access (usually ISA DMA on channel 3) to provide even faster data transfer than EPP by having the ISA DMA hardware and the parallel port interface hardware handle the work of transferring the data instead of letting the CPU do this work. Many devices that interface using this mode support RLE compression. ECP can provide up to 2.5 MByte/s of bandwidth, which is the natural limit of 8-bit ISA DMA. [1]. An ECP interface on a PC can improve transfers to pre-IEEE-1284 printers as well, by reducing the CPU load during the transfer through the use of the PC's ISA DMA engine. However, reversing channel direction is not quick, so it is unsuitable for devices that frequently switch directions like network adapters and storage adapters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1284#Specifications

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