Re: IEEE 1284 (parallel port) slave to USB

delario <delario@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

i thought my example was quite clear.

anyway, to an average joe's it's like connecting PC's LPT1 port to a
printer's centronics connector.

Just to be different, here's another idea to throw into the mix.

Let's assume that your PC runs a USB-capable OS but doesn't have USB
hardware for some reason. And the software you want to run will happily
talk to a USB printer, if you had the ability to attach such a thing.

You could attach an ISA USB card (they do exist) or a local bus USB chip to
the parallel port, arranging it with a series of multiplexers and registers
(or a CPLD containing the same) to fabricate enough of a local bus to keep
it happy. Or perhaps easier just use a microcontroller with USB host and
suitable firmware to receive data via the parallel port.

Then write a driver for your PC's OS that registers this new interface as a
USB host controller port, and does the job of translating USB host commands
into parallel port writes that your microcontroller can understand. So
you're simply forwarding USB packets back and forth between different
formats.

The advantage of this approach is that all the complex USB host stuff is
done on the PC, and effectively you just make yourself a completely
functional USB port that happens to use the parallel port to pass the data.

Theo
.

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