Adding parallel port to a laptop?

radiospan

I need to add a parallel connection to my laptop (not for a printer).

I'm looking for a PC card (or maybe some USB solution) to do this. (I need a DB25 female connection).

I think something like these is what I need:

http://www.made-in-china.com/image/2f0j00FvjaJONnKEqyM/PCMCIA-to-Parallel-Cardbus.jpg
http://www.koutech.com/proddetail.asp?linenumber=213
http://www.dpie.com/pcmcia/spp100.html

But I can't find an Irish (or European) vendor for any of these.

Has anyone here bought something like this, or know where I can get one?

Khannie

ebay is your best bet I'd say....

example here.

You can get USB->parallel also. Again, I'd try ebay.

Capt'n Midnight

out of curiousity what is it for ?

if it was a printer you could have used a network printer box.

some programs won't talk to USB drivers for parallel ports
and usb-parallel only works when the usb drivers are loaded by an OS

http://www.marxcomputers.ie
USB - Parallel cable €23.00
and they are open tomorrow morning

logger

Have bought one in the past from Lindy, www.lindy.com

We were trying to use the one we bought to enable us to use dongle protected software on a new laptop, it didn't work. However that was at least two years ago, and in fairness our dongle supplier had advised us on buying it, and so they bought it back off us for testing.

Have just looked up their catalog, no longer do PCMCIA one, but instead do a mini docking station, which includes a parallel port,

When purchasing from this supplier or any other, as if it is suitable for the use you are intending, at leat then you may have some comeback.

radiospan

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

out of curiousity what is it for ?

if it was a printer you could have used a network printer box.

some programs won't talk to USB drivers for parallel ports
and usb-parallel only works when the usb drivers are loaded by an OS

http://www.marxcomputers.ie
USB - Parallel cable €23.00
and they are open tomorrow morning

Hey, thanks for the suggestion.

We use the parallel port on a PC to program a microcontroller board (this one) for our final year project. It's programmed via a DB25 parallel connection, so the printer connection type seems to be no use.

We're trying to move the project onto laptop so that it's more portable.

@lindy
That docking station on lindy seems to be what we're looking for. Will look into it, thanks!

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.oopic.com/progcablp.htm


They are sending serial data across the parallel port. To do this they may need to access the I/O port directly. I'm guessing you may not be able to do that with a USB dongle.

A USB serial port might work better

or a PDA ?
You can get compact flash serial ports, and then an adaptor will allow it to go into pcmcia slot and you should have a true hardware serial port then.
http://www.oopic.com/progccon.htm

Via Serial Control Protocol (SCP) created by Savage Innovations: In OOPic firmware version B.2.0+, the primary serial port is dedicated to a system called the Serial Control Protocol (SCP) which allows the OOPic to be controlled over the serial port. SCP allows a remote PC, Pocket PC, Palm Pilot, or any other device with a serial port to interact with, control and debug an OOPic application while it is running including directly interacting with the application's Objects. In addition, the serially attached device can be used as a terminal to the OOPic providing user programmable I/O to such devices as a Palm Pilot, or a Gameboy. Special considerations were made in the protocol to allow the serial connection to be done via a wireless radio link.

EDIT - looks like I2C doesn't use negative voltages like RS232.
and they don't show the wiring diagram from serial cable yet.
so I don't know if you'd need a level convertor if you tried to wire your own serial cable.