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| Looking for help: Capture printer data on parallel port |
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| Bicurico:
Hi, I am trying to support a friend with this issue: he is about to purchase a test equipment, which only has a centronics (parallel port) interface. This is supposed to be used with a printer to obviously print out the test reports. The problem is of course that it is difficult to find printers with a parallel port nowadays and the test equipment only supports these four printers: HP Thinkjet EPSON LQ 1000 (24 Dot Matrix) EPSON FX80 (9 Dot Matrix) IBM Proprinter XL My reasoning is that there must be a way to just read out the data sent by the device on the parallel port, transfer it through USB/RS232 to a PC and from there import it as plain text, PDF, or whatever. At this point I don't know if the test equipment sends just text or bitmap pictures, as well. Does such an interface (let's call it "Virtual Printer") already exist? If so, what do I need to google? I did find this: http://www.photologic.ca/CSC.html, but I don't know if it would work and the price seems a bit excessive, to me. Is it possible to read parallel port data into an Arduino? Sorry for the lame question, but I don't know anything about parallel ports... Thanks, Vitor |
| james_s:
Well you could try something like this https://www.amazon.com/Lpt2USB-Parallel-USB-Printer-Adapter/dp/B0015EP2JO It's not cheap but depending on what you're doing it might be worth it. You could also look around for an older printer that has a parallel port still, they are not that hard to find, my printers both still have it in addition to ethernet and USB. Probably not too hard to roll your own but you'd have to factor in the value of your time unless it's just for fun. |
| Bicurico:
Thanks, but this adapter you link seems to be the other way around: connect a LPT printer to a USB only computer. What I need is to interface the LPT output of a test equipment, so that I can redirect it back to a PC, where I grab the data. The problem is that the device is only compatible with these 4 printer models and those are pretty old and hard to find. Similar printers are sold for crazy prices, too. This is why I thought about not connecting a real printer, but a "virtual printer" that gets the data from the test equipment and forwards it to a PC, where I can produce a PDF or print it on a modern printer. This "virtual printer" device would probably have to be able to emulate an Epson FX80 (seems to be the easiest). Regards, Vitor |
| Halcyon:
Is the test gear running Windows? Perhaps you could install a virtual printer driver which dumps everything out to file? Or just use the built-in Windows "Print to File" option available in most print dialog boxes (see attached). I tested this with just a regular PDF document and it outputs the raw PJL (Printer Job Language) data to a file. There are hardware solutions on the market, such as the Silent Hawk products but they aren't cheap. |
| Bicurico:
Hi, It doesn't run Windows. Cheers, Vitor |
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