Conecting new printer to a 286 - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

7 Jul 2010

...
  Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2010 13:52:34 -0700 (PDT)
 From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com>
 Subject: Re: Conecting new printer to a 286

 On Tue, 6 Jul 2010, MikeS wrote:
  Seems to me all you'd need is a stock
off-the-shelf Parallel>Serial
 converter feeding into a Serial<>USB converter, no? 
 AND another PC.

 That will work fine for transferring files from a non-USB computer to a
 USB computer.  Although many of the off-the-shelf Parallel>Serial
 converters make assumptions about the computer's parallel port and are not
 always reconfigurable for all.

 The original post was about how to connect a 286 computer to a "modern
 printer".
 The 286 machine does not have a USB port.
 Off the shelf Serial<>USB converters will NOT work unless they are
 connected to a computer with USB.  They will NOT work connected to a USB
 printer without a computer that has USB.
 kk

 ------------------------------ Umm, yes, that's all quite obvious but I was
commenting on Tony's
suggestion below; considering that most inexpensive "modern printers" can no
longer print ASCII, this is probably the way you'd have to go anyway:

[QUOTE]
...
  Um, I'm confused.  The FT245R is a slave device. 
Would it not
 require a host controller to interface to a USB printer?  The FT245
 ISTR always looks like a communications device. 
It would, if you wanted to connect it straight to the printer. My idea
was a device to let you get the data off the classic machine onto a
modern PC, and then format/print it from there. In which case a slave USB
device is what is needed.

-tony
[/QUOTE]

m