There is a reason for being pedantic. But in this case, the issue has no consequences. We are being given an incomplete view of the problem. That's natural and to be expected. But when an inconsistency comes up, it casts doubt on the description and we want to get rid of the doubt. Doubt is where bugs often lie. Good debugging requires systematically collapsing doubt. In this case, you didn't seem to know the meaning of "parallel" and "serial". I'm not convinced that you do now. Serial ports on a computer carry EAE RS232 signals <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-232> Parallel ports on a computer carry a very different set of signals, originally intended for printers <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_port> The relevant standard is IEEE 1284. You really don't want to mix these two up. Even if computer manufacturers sometimes used the same connectors for each signal (lunatics). If you connect a serial and parallel port together directly, one or both might burn out. My guess is that they won't, but I don't know. Calling the 25-pin connector on your reader "parallel" is wrong and could lead to disastrous mistakes.
From what you have said, there is currently no problem caused by this confusion. I cannot imagine that any of you concerns arose from this confusion.
| From: Karen Lewellen via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | | ...and of course that the words serial to parallel appear in the product | description , for smart marketing is unimportant. | Is there a reason why you wish to play dueling dictionaries? | Someone previously started an entire thread on the reading edge, so some on | the list have seen the unit in question.