Old BYTE magazine GPIB to centronics printer interface

The GPIB state machine is exceedingly complex. If you need all of it, go buy the chip. The good news is that many applications need almost NONE of it implemented. If all you want is to be the controller in charge, you just need to address the device and handshake the data.

If that will do, email me and I'll send you some basic code written for a PIC processor that implements RS-232 to GPIB. Should be easily adaptable to centronics.

If you want to use the printer port on a PC I can email you this:

This archive contains files that describe how to convert an inexpensive parallel printer adapter on a PC to interface with GPIB (or HPIB/IEEE-488)equipment.

Don't know where I got it, so can't give you a link.

If you don't need to use the national instruments code, you can buy older non-compatible gpib cards for cheap. mike

And if you want to use an old printer from the GPIB it is simple. This wont work with newer printers with data going both ways.

You take the handshake lines from the printer and connect them to the GPIB handshake lines. You use inverters on the eight data lines from the GPIB and send the data to the printer.

I did this years ago and it worked fine. You can't have any other device on the GPIB buss as this interface takes any data and prints it. Sorry but I don't have the pin connection data available

Good luck Bill K7NOM

Try a library, remember those. That's what we all used before Google.

I remember going to the University in Phoenix Az in 1984 while on a trip over to the US, they had an excellent facility which outsiders could use after a simple registration.

They had microfilmed archives, you could 'hire' the reader and printer for $10 or something similar.

Peter

You'd be surprised how little magazines are archived after 20 years or so. If you're lucky, they might have the set on microfilm, but only at the "central" branch.

Can be more difficult to find this stuff than you think.

Harvey