I did a little googling today and I think I know how to set this up. Any advice is greatly apperciated.

At work, I have a HP Athlon 2800 or so, on a network. It can access the interweb and the other computers. I want to add another NIC card to go to a printer directly. the CAT5 is much faster than the LPT1. The computer is running WinXP Pro. The printer is an Agfa Grand Sherpa wide format printer.

Right now, we have to swap out the CAT5 wires from the printer and the switch to access the internet, and the same to use the printer. The printer is on a static IP, the network part is dynamic. You have to change IP's every time too.

So I have a spare NIC, and want to make the primary (onboard) NIC for the network, and the secondary card is just to run this printer. I install it and then make it a static address that is totally out of my networks subnet, and it should work?

Any advice or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

E

It should work, in theory at least. Worth a try I would say.

Yep. that'll work.

BUT,

Why not just print across the existing LAN?

Quote: Originally Posted by joecoin Yep. that'll work. BUT, Why not just print across the existing LAN?

Exactly what I was thinking... set up a print server or even just map the printer itself on each of the computers using IP addy instead of the name. Run the CAT5s from the puters to the switch, CAT5 from printer to switch, CAT5 from Switch to outside internet connection. This way everyone can print AND surf the net.