Printer ports for the modern PC

[Monkeh]

What is the problem? Win7 supports usb3 and 2 is backward compatible with 3

7 doesn't come with an XHCI driver out of the box. Or even from Windows Update most of the time.

[Halcyon]

What is the problem? Win7 supports usb3 and 2 is backward compatible with 3

7 doesn't come with an XHCI driver out of the box. Or even from Windows Update most of the time.

I'm not sure what the drama is? I just plugged in an old USB 1.1 device and it seemed to work fine under Windows 7. My understanding was that USB was designed to be backwards compatible all the way back the original spec?

[rdl]

The problem is installing Windows 7 when the only available ports are USB 3.0, because Windows 7 has no built-in drivers for them.

[RGB255_0_0]

Yep, you have to manually add the USB 3 driver using DISM to the boot.wim (and install.wim) so you can use the keyboard and mouse, and you may as well do the same with the SATA but at least with a working mouse you can point to the driver during install.

[joeqsmith]

This is the PCIe card that I am using.  I bought a few to try but this is the only one I could actually control with the old DOS debugger.   But, using their remap program causes it to stop working.   The programmer's software is all hardcoded so it should be simple enough to change it. 

[joeqsmith]

In order to boot DOS off a FLASK key, I just used the HP format utility.   I set the FLASH up for FAT32 and used the Window 95 boot files.  I wanted to be able to setup all of my old DOS apps while I was at it. 

[Monkeh]

Aaahh, a live Intellimouse. Memories.

[joeqsmith]

I started trying to debug the code with the DOS debug.  Nightmare.   I started coding the PC in assembler when it came out and bought MASM and their early C compilers.   I had moved these onto CDR cause you never know when you will need to work on some old DOS program.

I started out with the first version of Codeview.  Another nightmare.  Switched to the latest version I had and managed to get it running.

Lot's of trial and error but I was able to narrow it down.   The problem I was running into is the program is about 700K.  That's a lot of trial and error work.   

[joeqsmith]

A quick search and I found IDA.  They offer a free limited version of the tool.     Installed it and wow!  I went to the sections I had found in Codeview and worked from there.  It did not take too long to find what I was looking for.

A quick switch to hex and I now have something to search for.  Back to the raw EXE.

[joeqsmith]

Now this is some pretty crappy code.  They have these stupid menus and rather than pass the address, they hard code a separate routine for each address!     Early bloatware.

Next step, just search the raw EXE for the routines and ZAP them. 

[joeqsmith]

Only thing left is to try it.   Boot the FLASH key and run the software....  Remember the Hercules graphics card??   

[joeqsmith]

And bingo....   H/W Rev 2.3 and the serial number!!   

[joeqsmith]

The programmer has several built-in diagnostics.   The last thing was to run them...

And this is how we hack old DOS software....  Now if DOSBox or VirtualBox ever do get something to work, at least I have the hardware all running again. 

Still not a fan of the Windows 10 but really like the new PC.

[joeqsmith]

If you think this belonged in the test equipment area go ahead and move it back.   I doubt too many of us used these printer ports for printing.   

[System Error Message]

the problem that happens is that when installing windows 7 it doesnt natively have drivers for usb3 and raid chipsets.

Some bios allow setting the usb version. Make sure you plug into a usb port that is part of the chipset and not the extra usb ports added via some chip that arent native.
Using a usb2 flash drive and not usb3 may work though. If you wish to install windows 7 through usb3 you will need to be able to supply the drivers in some way. For example through a sata drive (a HDD or SSD formatted to fat32 or ntfs) with the drivers or even a disc drive through sata.

You can get printer ports on a modern PC through USB or if the motherboard has a header you can use that. However there is another method. You can use something like a raspberry that has a GPIO but it requires doing a manual pinout and some programming. As long as the speed needed for parallel doesnt exceed GPIO than it can be done. With a raspberry pi you can do cups and xsane for driverless printer and scanner sharing. This is an EEE forum, some electronics and hacking should be a solution.

USB is serial so usb to serial adapter is easy, but with parallel it will require some programming/chip and converting it requires drivers for the OS to see so its a lot of work but being able to use something that could support it like GPIO perhaps? parallel ports that may be compatible with custom wiring? You can get older or newer PCI/pcie cards that have parallel ports but the drivers might be something to consider.

[Monkeh]

^ And that's what happens when you make posts at 6am.

[rstofer]

Many older programs that had security dongles attached to the parallel port expect the port to be both physical and exist at an ISA address.  The programs are not clever enough to deal with the new PCI port numbers.

There are motherboards that come with parallel ports but I haven't checked to see if they are located at ISA addresses.

Networking an old box to provide print services won't solve the dongle problem.  There are MANY ethernet -> parallel port adapters (print servers) around that work well with legacy printers.

Despite all of this, there are thousands and thousands of CNC machines running off parallel ports.  I use an ethernet based Smooth Stepper because I didn't want to go down that rat hole but the parallel port is still the most common way to implement CNC.  I suspect the modern CNC programs can deal with the modern PCI based parallel port.  But I wouldn't want to try it myself.

[SeanB]

Aaahh, a live Intellimouse. Memories.

Exactly the one I am using. Have a collection of them, including the older USB/PS2 versions ( but I do not know where those green adaptors are) and even some ball mice with serial connection.

[richd]

I have an old HP Laser Jet 4P which has a parallel port and still works great.  I use this (picture attached) old linksys print server to put it on the network and it works great...