Re: interfacing parallel port printer to microcontroller

There are basically 2 issues:

(1) You probably want a printer that will actually accept ASCII codes and
print the characters, rather than expecting elaborate graphic codes from the
computer. All older parallel port printers are OK, but some newer lasers
and inkjets expect the computer to work out all their pixels for them, as I
understand it. If in doubt, do some experimenting using a PC. I think
Windows has a printer driver called "plain text printer" or something like
that which you can try.

(2) The Centronics interface is described in Horowitz and Hill, The Art of
Electronics. It is very similar to the bus of an 8-bit microprocessor. So
the buffering should be simple; lots of chips would work. You can wire the
printer directly to ports on the microcontroller if you want.



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