[Robotgroup] USB to LPTx legacy cable for laptops with USB onlyneeded

[Andre Lamothe]

Right, this is the problem. I don't want to do any engineering, you are 
looking at 100-200 hours of driver development, etc. that's a lot of work 
for the ROI. Basically, you would cause a $15-30K engineering fee, just so a 
few customers can buy a USB to parallel converter. So it's got to be 
something off the shelf. They are available for PCMCIA and plug in PCI, but 
USB to parallel cables seem to not have real "parallel" port capability. I 
did find one nutcase in germany that spent 4 years building the cable, 
writing the drivers, etc., but he has none for sale. I am going to see how 
many customers need them, and if its a potential ROI then I will just copy 
his design (its opensource) and use his drivers, software, but I wish I 
could find something from a reputable company that I can just buy in a nice 
retail package.

Andre'

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Atkinson" <pmatkinson at gmail.com>
To: "The Robot Group Mailing List" <robotgroup at puremagic.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 5:45 PM
Subject: Re: [Robotgroup] USB to LPTx legacy cable for laptops with USB 
onlyneeded


Andre',

I was looking at a Prop-stick and wondered if it could be programmed to act
like the USB to P-port cable you were looking for? I figure you probably
know more about the propeller than anyone I know. What do you think? I'm
guessing the host driver would be a pain...

Paul

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 2:02 AM, Andre Lamothe <ceo at nurve.net> wrote:

> Correct. Has to support low level parallel port I/O. So I can write to
> ports
> 0x378... or rather my tools that support the parallel port can.
>
> And its not just the chip, but their needs to be a driver that makes the
> port seem as an LPTx port as well at the kernel level.
>
> Andre'
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "TomD" <TomD at hyperweb.com>
> To: "The Robot Group Mailing List" <robotgroup at puremagic.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2008 1:39 AM
> Subject: Re: [Robotgroup] USB to LPTx legacy cable for laptops with USB
> only
> needed
>
>
> so, you just need a cable that uses the PL2305 or FT245 , I get a lot of
> hits with those chips.
> Also for some reason PL2503 gets hits for parallel cables.
>
>  You do not want ones that explicitly say 'Important Technical
> Information:
> THIS DEVICE IS TO BE USED ONLY WITH PRINTERS, NO OTHER PARALLEL DEVICES
> WILL
> WORK. NOT EVEN MULTI-FUNCTION DEVICES'
>
> but then you've already found out that part.
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