Printing to PC

Hello,

I have a device that prints characters to a matrix printer. I would like to
get rid of the matrix printer and store the data to file. However the device
printing is not a PC and because it's old hardware I cannot get any support
for this.
I should be possible however to read directly from the LPT port thats
currently connected to the printer and feed it to a small PC. The PC would
wait on data to arrive and store it to ASCII file on disk.

Could someone please advise how to make this happen?? I have googled, but
not come up with something usable sofar.

Kind regards, Darius Blaszijk

Darius Blaszijk wrote:
>
> I have a device that prints characters to a matrix printer. I would
> like to get rid of the matrix printer and store the data to file.
> However the device printing is not a PC and because it's old
> hardware I cannot get any support for this.
> I should be possible however to read directly from the LPT port
> thats currently connected to the printer and feed it to a small PC.
> The PC would wait on data to arrive and store it to ASCII file on
> disk.
>
> Could someone please advise how to make this happen?? I have googled,
> but not come up with something usable sofar.

IIRC the fundamental parallel printer protocol, omitting such
signals as paper out, is:

The printer returns one signal, busy.

1. The sender awaits not busy.

2. The sender asserts 8 parallel bits (for an ascii char), and
then strobe.

3. The printer asserts busy.

4. Hearing this, the sender removes strobe.

Busy may last some time, for actual line printing, page ejection,
etc. Most signals will be negative logic, TTL levels.

You may find more accurate information by searching for Centronics
or Centronics interface.

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>I have a device that prints characters to a matrix printer. I would like to
>get rid of the matrix printer and store the data to file.

>I should be possible however to read directly from the LPT port thats
>currently connected to the printer and feed it to a small PC. The PC would
>wait on data to arrive and store it to ASCII file on disk.

>Could someone please advise how to make this happen?? I have googled, but
>not come up with something usable sofar.

My suggestion would be a simple app that reads from the parallell port and
converts the data to ascii (I'm sure there are applications for this).

Regards,
Chris