NO parallel port.

[Muhammad Nasar]

I have boughtt a new motherboard and it doesn't has a parallel port, and i used ICSP to program my 8051 microcontrollers through it. What should i do? will ICSP work with USB to parallel converter.

[Bored@Work]

Buy an "intelligent" programmer. Programming with a USB<->Printer adapter won't work.

[amyk]

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/db-25-pin-printer-parallel-pci-card-for-desktop-pc-52833
This one seems to have slightly more circuitry:
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/parallel-port-pci-expansion-card-4638

[Psi]

Sadly the usb->parallel port adaptors only work for printers. They dont provide any of the hardware ports (378/278 etc).


You can still buy printer port add-on cards (pci/pci-e), so that's an option.

[Muhammad Nasar]

Sadly the usb->parallel port adaptors only work for printers. They dont provide any of the hardware ports (378/278 etc).


You can still buy printer port add-on cards (pci/pci-e), so that's an option.

Will PCI  card Parallel port work with my ICSP programmer ?

[Fraser]

I have a Hi-Lo programmer that appeared to use a Parallel port but it turned out to be an 'intelligent' interface. The bad news was that it was an ISA Bus card !

In my case I have a new home office computer that meets with my lovely wife's approval for good looks etc and I have a lab computer that provides me with easy access to my data archives, internet etc. The home office computer is a DELL Inspiron ONE...very nice but totally USB and no card slots. The lab computer is a DELL Dimension 4550 and it has a parallel port built in and so supports my legacy Velleman and PICO PC oscilloscopes.

The Hi-Lo programmer presented a problem though as my lab computer is PCI without any ISA bus slots. As a result, I have another small footprint HP PC dedicated to the programmer    The bad news is that these PC's take up space. I use a KVM switch to reduce the display and keyboard space overhead.

Legacy PC's can be picked up for peanuts these days. Its a good idea to hold on to an older PC in order to support legacy interface requirements.... its often cheaper and easier than trying to persuade a modern PC with Win 97 to talk with a 'clever' interface adapter that in turn must 'talk' to the aged accessory ! Incompatabilities can waste a heap of time and cause much frustration !

I bought a new USB universal programmer and a USB PIC programmer last year to enable me to move forward with the ever changing world of programmable IC's. The Hi-Lo is a nice unit though and I have a similar high quality Dataman universal programmer...I don't want to retire them just yet 

[firewalker]

This one seems to have slightly more circuitry:
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/parallel-port-pci-expansion-card-4638

One of the comments:

I've bought it to programming AVR microcontrollers. I've tried it under linux (ubuntu x64), using "5-wired" easy-to-make homemade AVR-programmer with buffer 74hc244n. Everything works great! I've programmed it using Ponyprog2000 program and avrdude console programmer. Both works ok (using STK200 mode).

Alexander.

[Zad]

If your PC is a new design, then the Northbridge chipset has a built-in parallel and serial port. It is just the motherboard design that doesn't bring it out to a connector. If you check the motherboard documentation you may find that there is an unused header with all the relevant connections. If so then check Ebay etc for a breakout lead / interface that fits into your PC expansion slot back panel.

[Psi]

Sadly the usb->parallel port adaptors only work for printers. They dont provide any of the hardware ports (378/278 etc).


You can still buy printer port add-on cards (pci/pci-e), so that's an option.

Will PCI  card Parallel port work with my ICSP programmer ?

If your ICSP programmer only requires a standard LPT printer port then yes.
A PCI parallel port card is the same as having one built onto the motherboard.
It's a printer port driver IC connected directly onto the system bus over PCI, so hardware calls to 0x278/0x378 etc all work.

But as said above, check if your new motherboard has a printer port header.

[ivan747]

Sadly the usb->parallel port adaptors only work for printers. They dont provide any of the hardware ports (378/278 etc).


You can still buy printer port add-on cards (pci/pci-e), so that's an option.

And they work pretty damn well. I used one to directly access the parallel port and it worked normally, even using the hardware ports (0h378 etc.) I could even bit-bang it for a project involving relays controlled with the PC. This was a cool project. It used a serial port with an IR receiver and a program called WinLIRC, that interpreted the codes sent by remotes via the serial port. I used another program to interface that. It received the WinLIRC commands and converted them into keypresses that where received by one specific program that happened to be controllable with keypresses this program was for turning individual parallel port I/O on and off. These went into the base of a transistor that driven the relay. The relay switched a standard outlet. Ta-da! A remote controlled power strip. I could even use WinLIRC to control a media center program at the same time. It was MediaPortal. You could do pretty much anything related to multimedia from there. It also had a little parallel port display (on another parallel port). It used another program to display the weather, email and even RSS feeds, controlled via LCD Smartie. Oh, and you could eject CDs from the remote! It was so awesome... all thanks to that parallel port card and an obsession to find the perfect unified media center. Mind you, this was about 2 years ago. I got started in electronics back in 2009.

This proofs that these PCI parallel port cards do work like a built-in parallel port. Because you can directly control the I/O lines I guess this is compatible even with the simplest parallel port programmers with no microcontroller in them. (I am talking about that 5 wire AVR programmer that only uses a 7400 series IC here).

[Psi]

This proofs that these PCI parallel port cards do work like a built-in parallel port. Because you can directly control the I/O lines I guess this is compatible even with the simplest parallel port programmers with no microcontroller in them. (I am talking about that 5 wire AVR programmer that only uses a 7400 series IC here).

You can even program an AVR with pin to pin connection to the printer port without a 7400 or any other components.
That's what i used to do using AVRdude and the Brian Dean pinout (-c bsd)

[amyk]

This proofs that these PCI parallel port cards do work like a built-in parallel port. Because you can directly control the I/O lines I guess this is compatible even with the simplest parallel port programmers with no microcontroller in them. (I am talking about that 5 wire AVR programmer that only uses a 7400 series IC here).

You can even program an AVR with pin to pin connection to the printer port without a 7400 or any other components.
That's what i used to do using AVRdude and the Brian Dean pinout (-c bsd)

Be careful with 3.3v-only devices and parallel ports that may output 5v. Either 3.3 or 5 is fine by the standard but if you're directly connected to an AVR then make sure it can take 5v.

[Psi]

Yeah, it has to be a 5V device.

But that's fine for all the ATtiny/ATmega stuff

[McMonster]

AVRs are known to survive conditions far beyond what's stated in the datasheets, like connecting to 12 V source for a few moments, so I don't think there'll be a problem.

I'd worry more about parallel port itself, they have very poor drive capability and can be easily damaged, so if you don't use buffer IC for PP programmer then at least putting some 330R resistors in series with the ISP lines is a good idea. I'd also recommend to use this kind of programmer only to "bootstrap" build of a more advanced device, USBasp for example, preferably optically isolated from your computer's USB port.