TechBlog from Sewell

Before there was today’s IEEE 1284 or RS-232 and all of those super fancy high-tech data transfer protocols, there was GPIB, or IEEE 488. GPIB has been used for almost 40 years and it is a marvel that for certain applications, GPIB is still alive and well.

Remember those old Commodore computers you grew up with, spilling milk in between the keys and getting in big trouble with dad? Well, many models of those old computers used to use GPIB interfaces to connect peripherals like disk drives. It was developed originally by HP in the late 60s to use with multimeters and logic analyzers and the interface lives on today in industrial and commercial settings to control automated machinery.

Often times it is much cheaper to somehow get today’s modern computers to comunicate with older machines rather than building or buying new manufacturing equipment or automated systems. That’s where the USB to GPIB comes in. With the universal serial bus (USB), it gives a new fighting chance for old modules with legacy to continue living.

GPIB works on the parallel data transfer specification and the maximum transfer rate is generally 8 megabytes per second.

There are 3 main parallel interfaces. The 25 pin connection(1284a) as a standard is found on the computer end of the connection. While the 36 pin standards(1284b and 1284c) are found on the device side of the connection. HP printers will either have the smaller 36 pin connection(mini centronics or 1284c) or the larger 36 pin connection(centronics or 1284b). Most other manufacturers used the Larger 36 pin connection(centronics or 1284b). Some devices do have a 25 pin connection on them, such as paralell zip drives, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

Here are some very easy instructions to get the Quatech Parallel PCMCIA card working with FastLynx:

1. Install the Quatech card and drivers

2. Open the Quatech Parallel Port properties in device manager

3. Click on Resources tab

4. Click on I/O address and uncheck “Use Automatic Settings”

5. Click on the “Change Settings” button

6. Enter range EFF8 – EFFF (a range slightly lower should work if this address is already taken.)

7. Click Okay

8. Click on “Port Settings” tab

9. Select “Try not to use an interrupt” or “Never use an Interupt” (an interrupt gets in the way for some reason)

10. Enable “Legacy Plug and Play detection”

11. Click Okay

12. Restart your computer

13. Open FastLynx

14. Click on “Specify Remote Connection Parameters” button

15. Specify whether the computer with the Quatech card is the Client or the Server

16. Select the LPT port that corresponds with the Quatech card

17. Lower the speed to 4-bit normal (it had issues in higher speeds. These issues may just have been the computers we were using. The connection broke every once and a while at the higher speeds.)

18. Click okay, and connect the two computers

19. Start transferring files

Here is a picture of a successful connection using the link integrity test.

Well, for all of you wonderful people who have been wondering if a USB to parallel adapter will work with a Parallel A/B switch, let me just let you know that it will. Just grab your A/B switch, hook the two printers up to it, and hook up the USB to Parallel adapter to the switch, install the printer software and you’re good to go.

Every so often here at Sewell Direct, we add something that strikes us as being particularly helpful to our well-being. Far too many times we’ve fallen asleep in front of our computers, awaking in the dead of night, only to nearly kill ourselves by tripping over printer cables as we stumble our way to bed. That’s why the Intellinet Wireless Router/Print Server has us all excited. Just plug in ye olde parallel printer into the server, and voila, no more printer cables stretching across the office. This handy little package also acts as a network router, allowing you to share your printer (and your internet) with others. (Mom always said that was the nice thing to do.)

We carry a USB to Parallel adapter that works great with Macintosh computers. Not only that, but it is easy to setup. Just follow these simple instructions:

1. Plug the parallel end of the cable into your printer.
2. Plug the USB end of the cable into your Mac.
3. Open up your Printer List

4. Click on the Add button
5. When the dialog box comes up, select USB from the drop down menu

6. Select the printer from the list and click on the Add button.

If you see that the Drivers are not installed (as shown below) then you will want to check to make sure the drivers for the printer are available for Mac, and that they are installed on your system.

If you suspect that there may be something wrong with the adapter then:

1. Open up your System Profiler
2. Select USB from the Contents list (you may need to double click on Hardware for USB to show up)
3. Once you have selected USB, look under the USB Device Tree on the righthand side. You should see a device labeled IEEE-1284 Controller.

The IEEE-1284 Controller is the USB to Parallel adapter. If you see this then the cable is installed correctly and working properly. If you cannot get it to work, then try it in another port, or on another computer. If it still doesnt work, then it may be defective. Contact the company you purchased it from and seek for additional tech support.

If you suspect that you may have compatibility issues with your printer, then do a search on the internet for your printer model, USB and Mac. You may find a solution.

I had a customer who was getting printer errors using our USB Printer Adapter. He had installed the manufacturer drivers (HP I believe) But every time he would restart the computer or reconnect his printer, it would install the printer again so he would have extra copies of the same printer in his printer and faxes folder. The extra copies were using Microsoft drivers–and had (ms) with the name of the printer.

He tried to delete the extra copies of the printer, but every time it would reinstall. Eventually he uninstalled all of the copies of the printer, then reconnected the printer. Like usual the printer reinstalled with a Microsoft driver. He opened the printer properties, then through the advanced tab, updated the driver on that copy. It loaded the manufacturer driver and stopped reinstalling extra copies.

USB to Parallel adapters are interesting adapters. They don’t work with any parallel devices that do anything other than print, and even some printers struggle connecting with these adapters. When customers have compatibility issues with parallel to USB adapters, there’s not too much to do.

In fact, there are only a few solutions we know of. You can:

1. Check with the Printer Manufacturer for an updated printer driver or for printer configuration help
2. Do an online search for your printer model and USB to Parallel alongside(e.g. Xerox 1400 USB Parallel) to see if someone has found a fix.
3. Try changing the printer spooling status by:

a. Open Printer and Faxes folder(within control panel)
b. Right click on printer and select properties
c. Check/uncheck box for Printer Spooling

If none of these steps work, then your next best bet is to try adding a parallel port to your computer through a different slot. If your computer is a desktop you will need a Parallel PCI card. If your computer is a Laptop you will need a Parallel PCMCIA card.

If you know of any other solutions, please let us know. You can submit a comment on this post.

Here is a list of security dongles that have been tested with the Quatech Parallel PCMCIA cards. It is rare for these suggestions to not work, so try them, and if they dont work, contact either the manufacturer of the dongle, Quatech, or our support team.

Rainbow Security Dongle

Follow the directions below to configure the Sentinel System Driver to work with a SPP-100 parallel PCMCIA card under Windows 2000 and XP. The Sentinel System Driver 5.41 can be configured to work with the SPP-100. I usually suggest for the customer to download the current drivers for the dongle especially customers using XP. These can be located at SafeNet-inc.com.

Hardware Configuration

1. From the Control Panel, double-click the System icon to open the System Properties page.
2. Click the Hardware tab and then the Device Manager button to open the Device Manager.
3. Click the + sign next to Ports (COM & LPT) to expand the tree.
4. Double-click on SPP-100 to open the property page.
5. Click on the Resources tab to see the resources used by the adapter. The value listed next to the I/O range will be the bus address the Sentinel software will be looking for, so be certain to write this value down.
6. Sentinel Software Configuration

Install the Sentinel System Driver

1. Start the driver configuration utility, SetupSysDriver.exe. It is usually located at C:\Program Files\Rainbow Technologies\Sentinel System Driver.
2. Click the “Configure Driver” button.
3. Then click the “Add” button.
4. Enter the I/O address of the SPP-100 parallel port card into the “Bus Address” field. Please leave all other options at the default value.
5. Click the “OK” button.
6. The next screen shows that a User Created port has been added.
7. Click the Add button to close the dialog and then open the File menu and choose Exit to close the Sentinel System Driver Configuration Utility.
8. The Sentinel System Driver should now be configured to use the Quatech Parallel PCMCIA card.

Aladdin or Hasp dongles

This information was provided by the Aladdin/Hasp support team. This seems to work sometimes but there is contact information from the Aladdin/Hasp support. for additional help:

The Hasp/Aladdin dongle has a configuration utility that needs to be told what base address the parallel port is installed at.

1. Set the port to LPT1 with a manual I/O address range of 478 - 47F (automatic setting chooses FFF8 - FFFF).
2. Unzip and extract the hinstall.exe and the haspds_windows.dll files to the same folder.

Remove the previous version of the HASP Device Driver by doing the following:

4. Click on Start.
5. Scroll up to Run.
6. Click on Browse and look for the hinstall.exe file.
7. At the end of the path, type in -r -kp -alldrv It should look something like this depending on where you put the hinstall.exe file.

C:/hinstall.exe -r -kp -alldrv

8. Install the latest version of the HASP Device Driver by doing the following:
9. Click on Start.
10. Scroll up to Run.
11. Click on Browse and look for the hinstall.exe file.
12. At the end of the path, type in -i
13. It should look something like this depending on where you put the hinstall.exe file.

C:/hinstall.exe -i

You can contact the support team at Alladin/Hasp by calling 800-223-4277 or writing to support.us@ealaddin.com.

Metrowerks Code Warrior/OCDemon Wiggler

Metrowerks uses a Command Converter Server which is part of the CodeWarrior software. The CCS usually appears in the icon window next to the time once the OCDemon Wiggler is tried. Double click on the icon for the CCS. This will open a window that looks and acts like a command prompt. The following commands need to be entered.

delete all

config cc lpt:0xFFF0 (where 0xFFF0 is the address of the parallel port)

save cc

config save

These commands should point the CCS to the correct parallel port, save the configuration for later use, and allow use

DK2 Dongle

The latest DK2 driver installation (v6.08.0.154) can be found here, it includes support for Windows XP :
http://www.deskey.co.uk/deskey_downloads.php. I would recommend using LPT address of $378,$278 or $3bc.

Depending on how the PCMCIA device implements its driver the DESkey drivers may not be able to find the LPT port, you can hard code the address the DK2 to be searched by adding it as a DWORD registry value named ‘LPTPort’ in ‘HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\dk2drv\Parameters’.

Keylok and Husqvarna Viking Security Dongles

Keylok and the Husqvarna Viking security dongles are not compatible with the Quatech Parallel PCMCIA. Both manufacturer’s say that their dongles will not work with a USB or PCMICA parallel port.

I had a custome who was using our USB to Parallel Adapter with an older HP printer. It all installed fine, and he could print the test page perfectly, but when he used any other applications, like a spreadsheet or even a notepad document, the printer seemed to be working, but the page came out blank. the printer ran through the page line by line, but never printed any ink.

It turned out that he disabled spooling, from the printers and faxes folder. He opened the printer properties and checked a box that said “Print directly to the printer” It printed all of his documents.