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Anyone used a parallel to USB cable for a printer?
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Mac Elite
Join Date: May 2001
Status:
Offline
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Hi guys,
Just bought an iMac off eBay for a friend. Problem is, they bought a printer a few months back for their old PC, which is only parallel. It's a quite new printer (Epson Stylus something), but it comes with a USB model and a Parallel model, thus, their model has no USB.
Does anyone have any experience with Parallel to USB cables? I know they seem to work pretty much flawlessly on PCs, but how about Macs? Would the Mac just think its a USB printer?
Anyone who has ever used a parallel printer with a Mac, I want to hear from you!! Thanks!! 
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: In bits and pieces on Cloud City
Status:
Offline
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For the cost of the adapters themselves and you can get a new USB Canon printer.
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"Curse my metal body, I wasn't fast enough!"
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Mac Elite
Join Date: May 2001
Status:
Offline
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I agree, if it were me, I would buy a new printer. Then again, I wouldn't have bought a printer 3 months ago with only a parallel port.
Anyway, the printer cost $130 - and a USB-Parallel adaptor is $35, so it is still a worthwhile investment if it works.
Problem is, everywhere around here doesn't regularly stock them, and if they order it in specially, they won't let me take it back. Order online, and no refund unless there is something wrong with the unit.
Just hoping someone out there might have used one before...
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: In bits and pieces on Cloud City
Status:
Offline
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Originally posted by thePurpleGiant:
Just hoping someone out there might have used one before...
I know someone who used it in OS9 and it was a nightmare. It would stop working all the time and we had to reinstall things from scratch.
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"Curse my metal body, I wasn't fast enough!"
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: London
Status:
Offline
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I use an old HP laserjet (5M?) with one of those things - it works - but the set-up is a bit fiddly - and the cable has to be plugged in to the mac and printer at boot to work properly (don't ask me why)
There is a good hint on osxhints about this.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: May 2001
Status:
Offline
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Cheers guys - so the general consensus seems to be that they 'sort of work', and if you're lucky, they do work. I will find the cheapest one possible and get her to buy that, hope it works!
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: In the South
Status:
Offline
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One more thought, I got a converter-- ended up with pages of gibberish out of my printer. Not sure why, but ended up hooking it up to my router instead and printed using Ghostscript wirelessly. Worked well since then.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: 46 & 2
Status:
Offline
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Well, they work, mostly. Though, I have to say the gimpprint drivers are a bit of a hit-and-miss. I use one of those adapters at home with a LJ 1100, on a graphite iMac running 10.3.5 (Sarra's computer) and the print quality is quite good and it only gaffs every once in a while. Recycling the power on the printer fixes it though.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
- Thomas Paine
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Mac Elite
Join Date: May 2001
Status:
Offline
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Cheers guys - I went for the adaptor, and it nearly worked, but never printed! It automatically found some drivers for the printer, but refused to print with a connection error. Tried drivers from the net, gimp, no go. They all saw the printer okay to install, but reported communication errors when printing. 
So I guess we know no more than before - sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.
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