usb Parallel converter

No, that will not work!

So, you have USB on a computer, and parallel on a printer, and you have a converter to connect them?

Now you want to get rid of the parallel printer and buy a USB printer? No, your converter won't work, but you won't need it anymore. You can go USB to USB.

Maybe I misunderstood what you are asking.

I have not asked anything, but I have read what the OP asked and understood that he has a computer with parallel interface, and a printer with USB interface, and is looking for a gadget to connect the two.

However, a "USB to parallel printer" converter (cable) will not do that, it converts the other way around (USB computer to parallel printer).

No, these are only designed for one-way conversion. I'm not aware of any that are bi-directional.

If you want to get a USB printer working on a computer with no USB ports, I think your options are:

- Add USB ports to your computer by installing a USB expansion card that fits in an ISA or PCI slot. However, you will need to check if suitable printer drivers are available for the operating system on your older computer, otherwise the new printer may still not be recognised. Also, some older operating systems may not support USB at all.

- Buy a parallel-computer-to-USB-printer converter. These do exist, but are rather specialist and expensive. Try

or (I have not tried either of these devices, so cannot say how well they work).

It may be easier to keep a parallel printer for use with the parallel- only computer.

R

Does your PC have a RJ45 Ethernet connector? In that case you can connect a RaspberryPi, install Raspbian on it and CUPS and connect your USB-printer to the RPi. By that way you can print via network.

Kind regards, Eike

Yes, it seems that he wants to connect a new USB printer to a parallel printer port on said 1995 computer. Even if possible, the computer won't recognize the new printer... good luck finding drivers for that machine, likely running Win 3.11 or 95.

[...]

Read again. Several computers oldest of which is 1995.

Generic PCL or Postscript will work fine with older computers. Also Epson compatible line printing. I have seen VJP ask about XP and Linux issues. I venture there are modern Linux distributions that can still run on 1995 hardware.

Using network printing, possibly with a pi as a server, and generic PCL / Postscript is probably easiest for OSes of that era.

Elijah

------ first used network printing in 1991

Of course it depends a lot on the printer. I have never bought "toy printers" so I have no personal experience with that, I always used printers that supported Postscript or well-recognized other standards. However, I know that printers have existed (especially on USB) which do not support any printer language and can only print a bitmap sent to them in a proprietary protocol. The Windows driver that comes with it does all the rendering on the computer then sends the prepared pages to the printer. No idea how common that still is.

A "red flag" is "only drivers for Windows available for the printer".

heh... Just for grins, and some actual, but seldom needed use, I have WordStar 6.0 running in xdosemu on my linux workstation. It prints Just Fine to my lan connected HP Jetpro M404n, even tho' WordStar "thinks" it's still printing on my long gone HP LJ III.

Jonesy

--
  Marvin L Jones    | Marvin      | W3DHJ.net  | linux 
   38.238N 104.547W |  @ jonz.net | Jonesy     |  FreeBSD 
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Basically my question is if the usb-prl converter works both ways.

Or how do I know if it does.

SIDEBARS: [The wiring goes behind furniture and through closets and is just too daunting. It is amazing that plain DOS output works in most places. I have been recently thrilled to mirror my old gnu-hybridised enviroment with DOSBOX on a number of systems. I'd love to play with Raspberry Pi someday.. even run TOPS20 on it. Do you really want a history of my sordid computing? In 1980 I got an HP262a terminal to which I RS232 y-connected an OKI82a in 1982 and an AMPRO 2210 80186 non-GUI MS DOS Generic PC in

1985. Really hate myself for dumping the OKI (because it used plain typewriter ribbons) in 1995 when I got the HPOJLX, latter died two years ago. I used to manually reload the HP26 cartridges and got loads of ink. I got a multifunction HP printer sitting on top of the dead one almsot five years now but never really got to figuring it out partly because I regret not getting a feeder. In 1995 I put the Ampro in the basement (where it later output to a Panasonic dot matrix just fine) and got a GW2K p5-75 from which I am typing right now using DOS Kermit dialed into bash shell. I got a USB card for the GW2K but never got it to work. The HiVal CD writer works about 20% of the time and the ioZip drive destroyed all the disks with hiss of death (misaligning of mag heads). But in 2007 I KVMed a 64bit AOpen on which I triple boot (gparted grub) DOS, Quantian and XP. I got two acer aspire laptops, one XP with cracked screen, another with very ornery but very fast linpus. I also have three refurbed desktops in the basement. I had a Mitsubishi brick phone in 1990 but haven't had a smellbone since 2009.]

--
	 Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus 
  blog: panix.com/~vjp2/ruminatn.htm - = - web:  panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm 
   facebook.com/vasjpan2 - linkedin.com/in/vasjpan02 -  biostrategist.com 
  ---{Nothing herein constitutes advice.  Everything fully disclaimed.}---

Ok so that has been answered: It doesn't.

Well, if you "acquired" an old scanner that had a parallel interface, if it worked it must be two-way!