NEW STANDARD APPROVED BY IEEE COMMITTEE FOR ATTACHING MULTIPLE DEVICES VIA PARALLEL PORT

IEEE 1284.3 Paves The Way For Expanded Use Of Parallel Port

SAN DIEGO, Calif., Nov. 16, 1998 -- A new computer industry standard, known as IEEE 1284.3, has been approved by the IEEE committee organized three years ago to study and establish a standard means of attaching multiple devices to the parallel port of a personal computer.

"The new standard paves the way for a significant improvements in the use of the parallel port as a shared system resource," said Mr. Larry Stein, president of Warp Nine Engineering of San Diego, Calif., and chair of the IEEE 1284.3 Committee. "IEEE 1284.3 solves the manufacturers’ problem of conveniently interchanging and connecting a variety of devices to one another. As desktop computing becomes more powerful, the attach rate of devices to a single host is only going to increase. The end-user will benefit by not having to open the computer to add new devices, and will be able to move the devices to other systems when necessary."

According to Mr. Stein, an independent balloting body voted 25-to-1 in favor of the standard.

Although the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) Standards Board needs to ratify the vote in a regularly-scheduled March 1999 meeting, there are no more technical issues remaining.

Now manufacturers may start reviewing the standard for implementation purposes.

The 1284.3 standard is a "superset" of IEEE standard 1284-1994, which defines various operating protocols such as ECP and EPP, among other things. A PC’s parallel port is commonly used to connect the PC with a printer or other peripheral device, such as a scanner, removable disk drive, tape backup subsystem or CD-ROM. The 1284.3 standard provides a standardized method of electronically addressing and selecting devices attached through a single parallel port. Once a device is selected it may operate at the full bandwidth of the parallel port.

The IEEE 1284.3 standard solves the problem created when an end-user wants to use a single parallel port to attach multiple devices to a PC. A very common example of this problem was the interest by end-users in attaching both their printer and their zip (from Iomega Corp., Roy, Utah) removable disk drive via the parallel port. Until passage of the IEEE 1284.3 standard, there was no widely-agreed-upon protocol that would enable port sharing, and users often encountered incompatibly problems based on device address conflicts and software driver problems.

Among the powerful vendors who have already committed to implementing IEEE 1284.3 is Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., which will incorporate the standard in its Windows 2000 (previously known as Windows NT 5.0) operating system, due out next year. Iomega Corp. has also adopted the standard for use in its’ zip parallel port products.

 New Standard Creates Powerful Alternative To USB

The new standard also represents a powerful alternative for both vendors and end-users who are considering adopting the new USB (Universal Serial Bus) port for multiple device connection.

"For certain classes of devices the IEEE 1284.3 standard gives the parallel port significant advantages over the USB port. For higher end printers, scanners, and imaging devices the parallel port can offer greater performance. This is particularly true as PCI based parallel ports become available. With PCI we will be able to get 3-5 Mbytes per second burst rates. This is significantly higher then today’s ISA based parallel ports and USB," said Mr. Stein. "The ability to connect and share these types of devices on a single port is a great improvement over the current situation. In addition, the IEEE 1284.3 standard is ‘backwards compatible,’ which means that products previously built and designed to function via the parallel port will work without a hitch under the new standard and improved parallel ports."

For more information about the IEEE 1284 and 1284.3 standards, please go to http://www.fapo.com and select the "IEEE 1284" information button.

 Warp Nine Engineering

Headquartered in San Diego, Calif., Warp Nine is a peripheral connectivity solutions provider offering state-of-the-art products that connect peripherals to host computers using new and emerging interface technologies. Warp Nine resells USB-compliant products (Universal Serial Bus) and manufactures board-level products and software drivers utilizing the IEEE 1284 bi-directional parallel port standard, as well as educational, training and consulting services for these products.

-end-

PR-4251-98