Compatibility Information

Rainbow Technologies is committed to maintaining the highest level of quality with its products. To help ensure this, we have tested our products with a variety of other parallel-port based hardware devices for compatibility and we have checked for issues when using two or more hardware devices on the same parallel port (knokwn as cascading). When cascading another hardware device with the Sentinel SuperPro hardware key, it is recommended that you place the Sentinel SuperPro key at the end of the cascading chain.

Printers and Scanners

To be consistent with the latest industry standards, we have designed our hardware keys to adhere to the IEEE 1284 standards. This is the most current standard for parallel port communications and has been agreed to by hardware vendors. The Sentinel SuperPro hardware keys are compatible with printers that adhere to the IEEE 1284 standard. There is a small percentage of printers that do not adhere to this standard, and for these devices, compatibility issues are usually resolved by installing the most current printer driver and/or the most current Sentinel System Driver. This can be downloaded at by going to this download page. If updating the drivers does not resolve the issue we recommend that you use the printer on a separate port from the hardware keys or contact your software manufacturer regarding a USB version of the Sentinel SuperPro hardware key. For a list of known incompatibilities, please click here.

Media storage devices

We have done extensive testing with many of the existing mass media storage devices that use the parallel port in order to prepare ourselves for optimal customer support. The Sentinel SuperPro hardware keys have an excellent history of working well with many devices in a cascaded fashion on the same parallel port. However, there are some mass storage devices that attempt to gain full control of the parallel port. It is not ideal to cascade a hardware key with these devices. Please click here for a list of devices that we recommend you use on a separate parallel port.

Hardware keys and dongles

You can successfully cascade Rainbow Technologies Sentinel hardware keys with other Rainbow Sentinel hardware keys, regardless of the vendor that supplies them to you. It is recommended that you keep the number of keys attached to you one parallel port to five or less. Additionally, we have done numerous tests with other hardware key vendors. For a list of hardware keys that we recommend you use on a separate parallel port, click here