reverse Parallel-USB cables?

I've seen many USB cables that claim to allow one to connect an older parallel port printer to one's USB port.

However, does the reverse exist? Does a cable exist that allows one to connect new USB stuff (digital cameras, etc.) to an older machine (which has no USB ports) via its parallel port?

No luck finding anything so far.

Michael

Reply to
mrdarrett
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I've got one of the above at home, but don't expect it to work with older software that expects to talk to the PC's parallel port directly. It does work for old printers using Windows sofware which goes through the Windows printer drivers.

I don't think that such a thing exists. How in the world would such a thing work anyway?

What is it you're trying to do?

Jeff

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Reply to
Jeff Findley

Hmm... doesn't exist yet, you say? Maybe I should make a mad dash for the patent office... (grin)

Connect a new USB anything (digital camera, scanner, printer, etc.) to an ancient laptop, with only a parallel port. Sure data transfer will be slow... but better than nothing.

The market demand for such a beast would probably be pretty small though...

Michael

Reply to
mrdarrett

How would that driver work? Many of those on the old 8 bit computer lists would like such a device, but so far no one has come up with a design, although there are chips that seem to have potential.

Reply to
Homer J Simpson

Where are you going to find drivers for its OS if the computer is that old ?

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Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

That would be the deal killer.

I do have an ancient 486 laptop though that runs Win95. (Slowly.) Floppy drive and hard disk only. Doesn't seem to take the newer PCMCIA cards. (My PCMCIA wifi card doesn't work with it.)

I had envisioned the Parallel/USB adapter for my PII-366 mhz laptop, but then I remembered it DOES have a USB port, but only a USB 1.1 port. Might be more practical just to try getting a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card for it.

Might make an interesting senior / Master's EE project though...?

Michael Darrett Northern California

Reply to
mrdarrett

File transfer only...? The device might have a linux of some sort on it. (Fedora Core 4 had no trouble downloading pictures from my Canon digital camera.)

But, for older computers, (before ECP and EPP), is the parallel port data path one-way only? In that case, nevermind...

Michael

Reply to
mrdarrett

Proberbly like those parallel port attached network interfaces back in the days.. Should not be a huge voodo to make a similar usb variant.

I think this can be accomplished with some usb-phy + fpga and hacker power supply setup. Some standard developer board could possible do this almost out of the box, minus the size ;) But too small market..

Reply to
pbdelete

The only Win 95 that supported USB was the final release, and I've never found a Win 95 USB driver for anything that I've owned.

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Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Isn't there supposed to be some sort of third-party add-on to get USB support in Win95?

The Win98 drivers wouldn't work then, eh?

Reply to
mrdarrett

I've tried them but I always got that rude message, "This driver only works on Win 98". Some demanded 98 SE. Adding the extras to make it Win 98 will really slow down an old computer, as well. Then you'll probably need to update I.E. several levels, too. I had a friend over the other day who needed IE5.01 or higher to install street mapping software in a laptop. After Win 98 was installed and the I.E. was updated, the thing was so slow it wouldn't run the software.

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Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Could he have used Firefox...?

Reply to
mrdarrett

At least 8 bit out , 5 bit in, thats what a laplink cable used for datatransfer. If you have a bios choice: choose SPP (Standard Par. Port.) Also when you fiddle with those bits, write zero to port 0, 1 and 2,to disable the hardware interrupt. If you do it from XP, disable the lp port in hardware, or XP will peek at the port every few seconds. And use userport.zip(google) to get port access.

Reply to
Sjouke Burry

The program refused to install if anything older than IE5.01 was on the hard drive. The microsoft website refused to allow him to download any updates because the I.E. wasn't new enough, but i dug around and found a copy if IE5.50 on a Earthlink CDROM. It installed, then the first CDROM of his program installed, then wouldn't install the actual maps. I told him that he needs to install all the MS updates for Win 98 SE, but he wouldn't listen. All he wants to use it for is plotting antenna radiation patterns for a half dozen AM broadcast stations. He is convinced that he doesn't need the updates, because he isn't going to use it online.

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Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

I have never seen one, and I doubt one exists. There's just no market. A USB capable computer on Ebay probably costs less than the adapter would cost.

In theory, you could connect the two USB data lines directly to the parallel port (both are TTL levels) and bit-bang the whole USB protocol. A programming job from hell, but when you're done, you'll have learned a lot about USB.

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RoRo
Reply to
Robert Roland

Can't you just buy a USB card for the old PC?

...Jim Thompson

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|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

X-Face: ?)Aw4rXwN5u0~$nqKj`xPz>xHCwgi^q+^?Ri*+R(&uv2=E1Q0Zk(>h!~o2ID@6{uf8s;a+M[5[U[QT7xFN%^gR"=tuJw%TXXR'Fp~W;(T"1(739R%m0Yyyv*gkGoPA.$b,D.w:z+ But, for older computers, (before ECP and EPP), is the parallel port

all PC parallel ports have atleast 5 input lines.

modern ones have bidirectional data lines.

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Reply to
jasen

There are different classes of USB 'stuff'. The most common are the "mass storage" devices. Many digital cameras, all external harddrives and USB keys use it.

There is a IDE over parallel port protocol which has been used in the pre-USB days to connect external harddrives or CD-ROMS.

It would be technically possible to create a device which maps the IDE-parallel protocol to USB mass storage. It would consist of a USB capable computer with the appropriate USB stack - one of the ARM-based Linux devices for instance.

Kind regards,

Iwo

Reply to
Iwo Mergler

USB is a master/slave port with power management. So, only a device with power available can be a USB master (and parallel ports don't have power available, generally).

Adding a USB port to an old computer is possible, and sometimes productive. My elderly Macintosh'es with USB are more useful by far than those without... but there's some gotchas. In the Mac world, it's the USB 2 addon that only works with Macs "with PCI 2.0", i.e. only with Macintosh computers that already have USB. All the USB 1.1 addons, which DO work, seem to be out of production. I was fortunate that PC Recycle had a bin I could rummage through.

Reply to
whit3rd

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