I built a little adapter (in one of those boxes designed to take a DB connector at each end) to turn an HP82165 GPIO connector into a PC-like printer port. I can then use a normal PC printer cable and printer on my HP71... In case anyone's interested, here's the wirelist... HP82165 PC Printer Cable (DB25-P) (DB25-S) DA0 5)----------------------------(2 D0 DA1 6)----------------------------(3 D1 DA2 7)----------------------------(4 D2 DA3 8)----------------------------(5 D3 DA4 22)----------------------------(6 D4 DA5 23)----------------------------(7 D5 DA6 24)----------------------------(8 D6 DA7 25)----------------------------(9 D7 DAVO 14)----------------------------(1 Stb/ RDYI 1)----------------------------(11 Busy Gnd 21)--+----------------------+--(17 SlctIn | | DACI 2)--+ +--(18 Gnd | +--(19 Gnd | +--(20 Gnd | +--(21 Gnd | +--(22 Gnd | +--(23 Gnd | +--(24 Gnd | +--(25 Gnd Some of the original IBM machines were fairly solidly made. The 5155 portable will stand up to real use (and some misuse...). Pity the electronic design was such a joke... -tony

At one time the better PC shops sold serial -> parallel (and the reverse) converters. Little boxes containing a microcontroller and not much else which let you hang a parallel printer off a serial port, or vice versa. I guess they're no longer easily available (they were useful, and it's a well known fact that, at least in the UK, PC shops don't sell useful stuff). But it's not exavtly difficult to design one! And there must have been magazine projects for these over the years (I think I remember one in 80-micro...) -tony