The main problem is that the IC that does the parallel port on you mainboard
will also do both serial ports, your games port and god knows what else as
well.  If you blow it you can expect to kiss most of the usefull functions
of your motherboard goodbye.

With a separate parallel card, you aren't guaranteeing that you won't blow
the motherboard, only carefull working practices can do that.  However, you
are far less likey to damage the motherboard.  Generally any 'accidents'
will blow the output buffers on the I/O card and that will be that.  You
will be $10 poorer and you will still have a working PC.

Regards

Mike Rigby-Jones

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tim Hamel [SMTP:IMDNICE12@AOL.COM]
> Sent: Friday, July 02, 1999 2:19 AM
> To:   PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject:      Re: lotsa newbie questions
>
> In a message dated 7/1/99 6:17:18 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
> ghartung@ADT.COM
> writes:
>
> > I would not have guessed an ISA card was isolated enough not to fry the
> MB
> > also
> >  in that situation.
> >
>
> Well..I'm not totally sure on this, but.......if something is burned out
> (or
> open circuited), then where does it go? Surely it won't go beyond the ISA
> card.
>
>
> Tim H.