Need help with FTDI VNC2

[pwb]

Hello everyone.
The company I work for has old control units that have a 25-pin parallel centronics printer output. We use this to print system reports. I want to be able to "print" a .txt file to a USB flash drive (not a computer) instead of using an old printer.

In the past we have used this unit to do the job:
http://www.ipcas.com/products/centronics-parallel-to-usb-printer.html
It works great, but we need more, and each unit costs $600

There are many converters on the market that go from USB to parallel, but very few that go from parallel to USB.

Somebody at FTDI recommend that I use their VNC2 module.
http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/FTDI/V2DIP1-32/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMv6j61pBJaFjCwiX6tRhx1FNJUwUNUr0HU%3d

Does anybody have experience programming these units to do what I am trying to do? I am an electrical engineer, but I don't have much programming experience.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[edavid]

That would be a difficult programming project.

I think it would make more sense to use a Raspberry Pi A+ ($20)... you would still have to write some software to read the printer port (or maybe you could find a driver for that), but the USB drive part would be much easier.

[pwb]

I'll check it out. Thank you!

[mikeselectricstuff]

Last time I looked, the VNC2 had pretty poor documentation.
You could do it fairly easily using Microchip's PIC24 USB devices, e.g. PIC24FJ64GB002 (even comes in DIP!) - they provide a USB filesystem library, so all you'd need to do is read the data in &  do simple handshaking while busy writing. I don't recall offhand if that device has enough 5V tolerant pins - if not the GB004 may do, otherwise just use some resistors.

[marshallh]

The VNC2 is a black box. If it does what you need with no modification, it's perfect, if not, you're hosed. They don't provide any documentation on the hardware, it runs a proprietary RTOS which in itself isn't bad, except there is no information on it.