DIY GPIB connector made from parallel printer cable

[soren]

What do you do when you want to play with having a microcontroller talk GPIB to test equipment, but don't have a GPIB connector?

You just make one of course!

(Looks like they are getting harder and harder to buy anyway.)

The formerly common parallel printer connector is a 36-pin version of the same connector type and many such cables are lying around unused, often with the metal-bodied Amphenol housing, which can be disassembled.

I ground away the excess plastic with a Dremel router bit. One tip is to remove or bend away the unnecessary pins before attacking the plastic so the tool won't catch on them.

Et voilà!

[alm]

Neat hack, and used parallel printer cables are a lot more common and cheaper on the used market (you can probably find them for free without much effort). You used an unshielded cable, so interference might be an issue under some circumstances.

[jancumps]

I nicked a parallel printer cable for the same reason just to find out it was smaller than the connector at the back of my scope.