P150-USB card-printer problem

[FijiJohn]

I am setting up a school computer (P150, 64MB, fresh install of Win98). I have added a PCI USB card and a Canon S200 printer. If I do ANYTHING while it is printing, it either freezes altogether or I get a USB printing error ("Invalid memory access loaction" or something like that) and the print job fails. I've tried two diffferent USB cards (USB 1 and USB 2, both with Via chips) and get the same result. I tried another printer (same model) and have same problem. Sometimes even if I don't do anything else it gets a printer error. Maybe it's the Canon driver but I have set many of these exact same model printers up on similar USB cards without this problem. Suggestions?

[Sterling_Aug]

Add more RAM up to at least 128MB.

[Midknyte]

is it win98 or win98se?

[BipolarBill]

Minimum requirements:

USB 1.1

P166 or better
32MB RAM or better
BIOS support for USB
Win98 or better

USB 2.0

PII 266 or better
64MB RAM
BIOS support for USB
Win98SE or better

VIA USB cards are horrible. Try an NEC-based USB card. Update teh BIOS before you do anything else. If you can't update the BIOS, give the project up - it won't work.

[ukulele]

Try turning off print spooling. It might take a bit longer but what the heck?

[FijiJohn]

Well, this thing has 4 slots for old-fashioned SIMMs and I don't have any thing bigger than 16MB sticks. 64 MB is all she's gonna get. It's running 98SE so I figured that ought to be (barely) enough for a USB 1.1 card. I re-installed the Canon drivers (again) and this time it seems to have made a difference. I also changed the spool settings as well. For now it works. Slow(!!), but it works.

I have to agree that the Via USB cards are a pain. However, that's often all I can get over here. I did score a couple of NEC 2.0 cards but didn't really want to have to use one on a funky old box like this P150. (However, the "best" school here has two PIII 933 boxes as the top end and then it goes down - quickly - from there to 486/66s.) Sigh.