14 Feb
2025
14 Feb
'25
12:52 a.m.
On Feb 13, 2025, at 6:54 PM, Henry Bent via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Thu, 13 Feb 2025 at 18:44, Rick Bensene via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
The later parallel ports include several faster modes than the original one. The best of
these is "EPP" mode which is fully bidirectional, with interlocked high speed
handshakes. I think you can get fairly close to (original) Ethernet speeds with those.
I once built a software-defined radio using one of those for its baseband data/control
interface, it worked quite well. The state machine fits in a small CPLD (Lattice
isp2032).
paul
There was a company called Xircom that made parallel port modems. These
were full modems that were small enough that they plugged into a laptop
serial <parallel> port, and got their power from the laptop via the
external mouse/keyboard port. They had a feed-though connector so you
could still connect and external mouse/keyboard if you wanted. ...
I remember those, and when I went searching to look for more information on
them I found something I hadn't stumbled on before - apparently Xircom made
a parallel port ethernet adapter. It must have been pretty painful. The
parallel port wasn't a great high speed interface; I unfortunately had a
parallel port ZIP drive and it was a dog.
-Henry