Modern laptop + USB-to-Parallel adapter + RetroPrinter... yes?

[jbrains]

Hi, folks. I am having trouble finding a PC with a genuine parallel port with which to test my RetroPrinter device. I have found a USB to IEEE1284/CN36 adapter. Does anyone have experience with connecting this USB-to-Centroics adapter to the RetroPrinter in order to use a modern computer as a test machine? Is there any reason it ought not to work on its face? If this configuration worked, would that be a "false positive" and have no bearing on whether the device would work in a genuine environment?

I can also purchase a PCIe Parallel port, then presumably any PC with an available PCIe slot would do, but that's more expensive, and so my second choice.

[RWAP]

Yes, a USB to parallel port adaptor works.

The issue is choosing a Windows printer driver which will work - we have had mixed results, unless we install a plain text driver and then send raw data from an emulator on the PC.

Many standard Windows drivers are aimed at later printers than the ones we emulate, and spend a lot of time asking the printer for status messages back from the printer to see if it is attached, ink levels, paper present etc (hence the remote mode which we refer to in the manual). Unfortunately, the exact details of these remote modes are VERY printer specific and the manufacturers do not share details as to how they should work!

[jbrains]

I dove in and purchased both, so I'll merely experiment. It's good to know that these experiments are not obviously doomed to instant failure.

[jbrains]

Yes, a USB to parallel port adaptor works.

The issue is choosing a Windows printer driver which will work - we have had mixed results, unless we install a plain text driver and then send raw data from an emulator on the PC.

Many standard Windows drivers are aimed at later printers than the ones we emulate, and spend a lot of time asking the printer for status messages back from the printer to see if it is attached, ink levels, paper present etc (hence the remote mode which we refer to in the manual). Unfortunately, the exact details of these remote modes are VERY printer specific and the manufacturers do not share details as to how they should work!

Hello again! I have the USB/Parallel adapter and now I'm furiously searching the web to figure out how to make anything talk to anything at all. I'm hoping that maybe you have some pointers in that direction.

My modern laptop running Linux sees the parallel port; I've added a printer in CUPS; I've connected the cable. When I try to send plain text with `lpr` or print a test page from the CUPS admin, I get "Printer not connected; will retry in 30 seconds." Do you have any suggestions to guide me as I get to the bottom of what's (not) happening?

Thank you.

[RWAP]

It will be the printer driver you have chosen - many modern printer drivers send a string of characters to the printer and wait for a response in order to detect whether the printer is present, has run out of ink or paper etc. What those messages and responses are vary according to the make and model of printer, so we cannot support them (I am not even sure if we have bi-directional capability on the centronics port to be honest).

You need to choose an old style printer that was around in the 80s / 90s, such as an Epson LX-850.

[jbrains]

Thank you. I had tried the Okidata Microline 320, because that is the printer that many of my intended adopters are using. As far as I know it, they run the ML320 in Epson compatibility mode.

I wil try an LX-series printer and see what happens. I had hoped that the Epson generic 24-pin printer would do the trick, but not yet. One step at a time.