Robin Williams Mac OS X Book, Jaguar Edition, The

Parallel Ports

Your Mac doesn’t have a parallel port, but your printer might. It’s a big, horsey-looking port that looks like it came from a PC, which it did; it looks much like the old SCSI port shown above. Parallel ports transfer data through eight wires, so all eight bits in a byte can go through the line at once (in parallel). Sounds like it should be fast, but most parallel ports are not capable of sending and receiving data at the same, which slows them down. The reason your printer might have a parallel port is because it can also plug into a PC. If the printer has a parallel port, it probably also has a serial port so it can print from an older Mac as well. Maximize your options.