DEC LA-180 and PDP8e/LC8-E

Hello, all, I recently got my hands on a classic DEC LA-180 RO (receive only) printer. It's a free-standing beast, with its own pedastal that the electronics are in. The electronics that make it work are all TTL, with a few MOS ROMs for character generator, and two 2101 RAMs for buffer storage. There's a second board, that connects to the main electronics board via a ribbon cable. This board has an old AY5-1013 UART chip, and a bunch more TTL on it, and appears to be a serial interface. The serial board appears to 'talk' to the rest of the electronics via a basic 8-bit parallel port with strobe and some status signals. The serial card has a cable coming off of it that goes to a DB-25 connector that is affixed to the bottom panel of the pedastal. I want to try to connect this up to my PDP8/e system as print device. I have an M8329 LC8-E Decwriter Control board for the PDP8/e. The PDP8/e/f/m External Bus Options Maintenance Manual says that the LC8-E module is intended to connect up a DEC LA-30 decwriter. The LA-30 seems to be a printing terminal, with a keyboard and printer. The LA-180 I have is a print-only device, with no keyboard. The LC8-E card has a Berg connector that is identical to the Berg connector on the printer electronics board of the LA-180. I'm wondering if the 'parallel' interface of the LA-180 is compatible with the LC8-E card, and all I need to do is disconnect the serial card from the main electronics in the LA-180, and connect the printer up by stringing a ribbon cable between the LA-180 and the LC8-E card. I don't have printsets for the LC8-E card, so I don't know the pinout of the connector for the printer, nor do I have any information at all on the LA-180 in terms of the 'parallel' port interface of the printer. Obviously, I'm not going to just plug it in and see what happens :-) Anyone out there know if this will work? If so, is a special cable needed, or will a 'straight through' cable work? Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks, Rick Bensene The Old Calculators Web Museum http://www.geocities.com/oldcalculators