USB to Parallel port

Hi

I have an ICE Technology Micromaster LV parallel port programmer which I use for some (old!) legacy devices. This runs fine on an elderly XP box with some drivers I found, however I'd like to run it from a newer PC, which of course doesn't have a parallel port.

Anyone know of a USB to parallel converter which is likely to work? ICE Technology (or their successors) don't.

Cheers

--
Syd
Reply to
Syd Rumpo
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Den tirsdag den 26. november 2013 23.54.43 UTC+1 skrev Syd Rumpo:

most likely none, the timing on USB is totally different so for anything but moving bulk data for something like a printer the USB to parallel converters don't work

-Lasse

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

The legacy software will most likley address the port pins directly.

So, no there is NO way a USB device can replace a legacy PPort.

Now, writing a custom driver that simulates that parallel port and sends those signals out the USB device may work.

But, (AFAIK) no one has done it yet.

Also, you can't sell a new widget by fixing the old stuff.

Reply to
hamilton

If the pc isn't a laptop a parallel PCI or PCI-E card would solve your problem. I've succesfully tested a CNC machine thanks to one of those cards on a modern PC without parallel port.

Searching for pci+parallel or pcie+parallel yelds some inexpensive cards at online shops.

Reply to
asdf

Highly unlikely. When you install such a device you won't get a simulated standard parallel port you'll get "USB Printing Support." No LPT number, no IRQ, no I/O address.

I just ran into this yesterday, using an ExpressCard parallel port adapter on Windows 7 (which appears to be an ExpressCard to USB adapter and a USB to parallel adapter combined together). I also tried running XP under a virtual machine but this didn't help. Now if you had a CardBus adapter it would likely work but no new laptops have a Cardbus slot.

If it's desktop then you could buy a parallel port PCIe card, i.e. .

Bottom line is that those parallel adapters will work for printing but probably not for other stuff.

Reply to
sms

"Syd Rumpo" schreef in bericht news:l738ra$72k$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me...

In my experience USB to parallel converters do pretty well for ordinary parallel printers but not for other devices. Most of the times there are timing problems. Especially USB-1 is way too slow and often quits without any warning. That's why I still have an archaic XT to run those prehistoric applications.

If your computer has an extension slot you can look for a PCI-e parallel printer port card (and hope the drivers will work on the new engine).

petrus bitbyter

Reply to
petrus bitbyter

Unfortunately, you're likely to need a custom implementation of some sort. As I understand it, the commercial USB-to-parallel converters use a protocol which is byte-stream-oriented and is designed only to drive printers and such similar devices. There's no standard USB-printer protocol for bit-banging the port pins (which is what many of these parallel-port-programmer devices require).

formatting link
may have a few hints.

Your best bet may be to keep an old-style laptop PC around for this purpose. Doesn't need to be fast or modern.

Reply to
David Platt

Though the replies so far have been pretty discouraging, if the newer PC has PCI slots you could try the following:

Get a PCI(e) parallel port card such as the following:

formatting link

Use VMWare Player to create a virtual Windows XP machine on your new PC and see if its parallel port passthrough support can get things working:

formatting link

Reply to
bitrex

Note that the second step is in case that the XP drivers you have are a bust (likely) under the newer Windows OS.

Reply to
bitrex

What devices are you programming ?

Reply to
hamilton

You may have a problem with that adapter; if the software has LPT1: or LPT2: "hardwired" in the program, then you are stuck using legacy hardware.

Reply to
Robert Baer

I think your only option is to retain legacy kit for this purpose or find one of the handful of real parallel printer port cards that are still made and hang onto it until your programmer finally expires.

The thing almost certainly relies on peeky pokey operations directly on hardware registers to function and that is decidedly non-portable.

I doubt if any will even with a very smart virtual driver. Your best chance is if the OEM offer support for Win7 operation of their old kit.

And you may run into interesting problems with race conditions in old drivers for ancient legacy hardware on fast pipelined multicore machines.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

expresscard is USB*, no adaptor needed.

(*) actually expresscard is USB + PCIe

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For a good time: install ntp 

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Reply to
Jasen Betts

Thanks for all the replies, I sort of thought that would be the case, but you never know.

I think the best suggestion is to buy an old laptop with parallel port. A desktop card is good, but I'd then have to swap it when I get a new PC, or hang on to a bulky item for very occasional use.

Ebay here I come.

The devices are old ICT PEELs, 32KB UV EPROMS and pre-flash PICs. The Micromaster LV does the lot.

Thanks

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Syd
Reply to
Syd Rumpo

That's what I do for my old LV. As an added bonus you get that wave of nostalgia as the clunky W95 desktop appears.

--

John Devereux
Reply to
John Devereux

If the laptop has a _working_ PCMCIA/CardBus/PC Card slot that will also work (with XP and perhaps Windows 7).

However I just discovered that my old Dell D630 with a PCMCIA slot actually doesn't work with any cards. The laptop freezes when you insert a card. This is a well known problem with the D630, at least with older ones. Yet my old D610 with a PCMCIA slot works just fine with a Koutech Cardbus to Parallel Port adapter (but it's not needed because the laptop already has a parallel port) .

Dell D series Latitudes also can use a Dell dock which has a real parallel port if the laptop itself doesn't have one, but it's kind of a pain to carry that around.

I have some stepper motors that need to be programmed via SPI using the manufacturer's utility and their parallel port to SPI cable. It would cost me $163 for their USB to SPI cable with the proper connector that works with their utility. I was disappointed that the ExpressCard to Parallel Port adapter didn't work. It's essentially two chips in that card, a PCIe to USB and a USB to parallel.

However, you can thank me or blame me (partially) for the fact that parallel ports didn't disappear even longer ago. I attended a meeting in South Dakota many years ago that Gateway called to discuss Microsoft's PC98 initiative which would have _forbidden_ legacy ports. If a manufacturer included the forbidden ports then they would have lost lucrative discounts on OS purchases. There was push back from computer and semiconductor manufacturers and Microsoft backed down.

Reply to
sms

Apparently there is one ExpressCard to Parallel adapter that people have had some success with but it's not sold in the U.S..

Reply to
sms

Its hit and miss. Some apps work, others don't.

The first thing to do is to make sure that you get an adapter that supports ECP, EPP and SPP modes. Also, IEEE-1284 compliance is good. USB-parallel port adapters do work with parallel port devices such as scanners (bi-directional data transfer).

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Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com 
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Reply to
Paul Hovnanian P.E.

On a sunny day (Wed, 27 Nov 2013 10:43:54 -0800) it happened sms wrote in :

Last year I bought a new Asus mobo, it has a par port header on it, and embedded graphics, cost about half that, M5A78LM

formatting link

Many of the cheap ones have, even the addres is 0x378. From ebay I got an adaptor cable from the header to a 25 pole connector on the back.

For about 200 Euro you get this board in a complete PC with RAM.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

For those that just need a parallel port for programming embedded devices it's probably a better deal to buy an old laptop on Craigslist for $100 or so. The thing is that often you need a system that's more portable than a desktop system. I.e.

But if you want a modern laptop with a parallel port the only real option is to buy a laptop with an Expresscard slot (such as many Thinkpads) and then carefully buy an Expresscard card that uses the PCIe interface on the Expresscard interface, not an Expresscard card that uses the USB interface on the Expresscard interface. This will work as long as the application uses the logical port (LPT1, LPT2, or LPT3) and doesn't try to write directly to the I/O address of these ports 0x3BC,

0x378, 0x278) and doesn't require an ISA IRQ. It would have to be a really old DOS app that wrote directly to the I/O address.
Reply to
sms

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