hi i have a old dell laptop and a new epson printer how hard is it to put in a usb port into the lap top?

What kind of device are you trying to communicate with? For awhile, China was marketing Parallel-port to USB 1.1 adapters, but I have not seen or looked for these lately. From a purely technical standpoint, one could obtain a USB 1.1 or 2,0 chip and using the pinout, jury-rig the thing into your box... I suspect you'd also have to have a schematic of the Laptop motherboard or docking port as well though in order to make the necessary connections - Then you'd have to procure or write a driver for your O/S to 'talk' to the chip and make it work. If I weren't a full-time SysAd and Student, I might try it myself. Why can't you simply buy an equal or better laptop WITH USB ports already installed? What price range are you looking at?

Sry.. I see now that is is a NEW Epson, which supports bi-directional print control, etc. Hmmmmm. Dell Tech Support may have techie data for your system, but I think it is more trouble than it is worth. I have a couple of old LT with USB (333Mhz, 256K, 4.8Gb HDD) Make an offer

should be as simple as plug and play, let me know if you have troubles.

You should be able to get a USB PCMCIA card for the laptop.

hankster that is a good suggestion but it is known that some devices are problematic with the pcmcia card usb's the fantom dyno being one of them, this of course does not apply to all laptops just certain ones. i know the toshiba tecra 8000 laptops have a usb on the side of them, however i talked with a guy today because i just finished remanufacturing mine and he claims that these still bring 500 to 600.00 :eek: (i wish i knew where to sell one for this price :lol: ). anyway i would just look for an older laptop that already has one in it so you do not have to mess with it.

hankster that is a good suggestion but it is known that some devices are problematic with the pcmcia card usb's the fantom dyno being one of them, this of course does not apply to all laptops just certain ones. i know the toshiba tecra 8000 laptops have a usb on the side of them, however i talked with a guy today because i just finished remanufacturing mine and he claims that these still bring 500 to 600.00 :eek: (i wish i knew where to sell one for this price :lol: ). anyway i would just look for an older laptop that already has one in it so you do not have to mess with it.

Maybe because some people are trying to stuff an 32bit card in while the laptop only supports 16bit?