EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: Circlotron on May 31, 2016, 06:51:39 am
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Looking for an adapter to connect a modern USB printer to a stone age industrial computer that has a parallel printer port. It is part of an engine dynamometer so it is not like a pc where you could just stick a USB board in it and be done with it. There are heaps of USB pc to parallel printer adapters but I can't find one the other way around. Does anyone know of one?
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There are LPT emulators. But these are rare. You have to ask the price rare.
http://www.pclviewer.com/resources/capture/index.html (http://www.pclviewer.com/resources/capture/index.html)
For me it was cheaper to ship the ancient device to the manufacturor to repair it.
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I've personally never seen one. I'd say if they do exist, they would be a very specialist item and probably wouldn't work with all printers anyway.
I know it's messy but do you have the option of "Print to File" and save the output to a floppy disk, then print the resulting file on another machine?
Short of that, do you have the option to print out to a COM (serial) port? This might help: http://www.printcapture.com/index.html (http://www.printcapture.com/index.html)
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I'd be looking for a printer that had a parallel port.
That would be my next option, depending on how desperate you are. Then again, finding ink/drums for them could prove difficult.
You mentioned the machine is a dyno, what sort of information does it print? Does it need a full A4 page or is it more of a "reciept" type output? If it's the latter, they still make new receipt printers with both parallel and USB ports, such as the Epson TM-T82II (http://www.epson.com.au/pos/products/receiptprinters/DisplayMain.asp?id=tmt82ii). You're likely to pick one of these "Point of Sales" type printers up brand new for far cheaper than a full blown parallel port desktop printer or dot matrix. Since most of these use thermal paper, you don't need ink, toner or ribbons.
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I'd be looking for a printer that had a parallel port. That would have to be one of the easier options but hard to find new. Something like a Brother HL2040 for example had both USB and Parallel interfaces.
Perfect solution! Never thought of that. :-+
https://www.mwave.com.au/product/brother-hl5440d-mono-laser-printer-duplex-usb-and-parallel-ports-aa50281 (https://www.mwave.com.au/product/brother-hl5440d-mono-laser-printer-duplex-usb-and-parallel-ports-aa50281)
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I'd be looking for a printer that had a parallel port. That would have to be one of the easier options but hard to find new. Something like a Brother HL2040 for example had both USB and Parallel interfaces.
Perfect solution! Never thought of that. :-+
However, make sure that the printer speaks the correct language (emulation) for your dynamometer.
The printer you mention has this in the specs: Emulation: PCL6, BR-Script3, IBM Proprinter XL, Epson FX-850.