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USB to Parallel cable

California

Charter Member
Site Supporter
I have an old Laserjet IIp that runs fine off an XP laptop, via a USB to Parallel cable. As I recall I just plugged it all together and XP provided the USB to LPT driver.

I was going to loan the printer to my tenant who has an old win ME laptop. But the ME unit can't see the printer. Properties shows 'USBPRN01 - No devices attached'.

Going into System/Advanced/Drivers shows the yellow questionmark for the USB port and 'bad USBPRN01 driver', so I went looking for a driver. Apparently it doesn't exist, or at least nobody ever mentioned it where Google could hear them. A search for .ini files on the laptop didn't find anything close, and letting Install search the cab files didn't find anything.

Has anyone gotten this to work? It connected so easily on XP that I assumed ME would work as well.
 

Spiffy1

Huh?
SUPER Site Supporter
OK, I'll say it: "Win ME sucks."

At the risk of asking a dumb question: does it have a parallel can he go directly to parallel from it? Sorry, no real help from here.
 

Bobcat

Je Suis Charlie Hebdo
GOLD Site Supporter
Spiffs right, ME was a flop and never had decent driver support. There were several I/O devices that I had to stop using after I 'upgraded' to ME. How about posting the make and model of the USB/Parallel and I'll hunt around a little for FAQs and drivers.
 

California

Charter Member
Site Supporter
No, no parallel port on this laptop.

Ha! The cable came off a pegboard in a thrift store, cost $1.98. On my XP laptop it ran 'right out of the box'. No trademark on it, no driver CD. 'USB to Parallel' is molded on the big end - not much to go on.

I *think* what I'm missing is the WinME USB/parallel port driver for this Sony Viao, but there's nothing on Sony's site. In the Google universe I didn't find a mention of any USB/parallel port driver for any OS. I'm stumped.

I agree ME sucks, after this experience. I've never had to deal with it before. I thought ME was Win98++ and I never had a problem configuring 98.

Now I wish I hadn't offered my idle printer to the tenant!
 

jwstewar

Active member
Back in the day when I used ME, I didn't have any problems with it. I actually thought it was a step or 2 ahead of 98. Heck, I had a machine that was still running it when our has burnt in September. I'm now running Vista on my laptop. It seems to work fairly well. Seems to be a little RAM hungry, but other than that it works well. Only thing I have found that won't work is some cheap software we picked up to help design the new house. What do you expect out of 6.98 software, chances are it wouldn't have worked under XP either. I know several folks at work that are converting their personal machines. Most seem to like it. I admit I don't think there is a pressing need for businesses to upgrade, but I don't think it is a POS like a lot want you to believe. In the 9 months I've been running Vista, I think it has crashed once. A lot less than XP on the same machine and a lot less than the Macs at the company that I do consulting with on the side. Everytime I go to their offices the machine does something weird. Just a lot less weird issues with Vista.

BTW, sorry I can't help with the USB to parallel issue. I had just bought one to play with right before the house fire so that I could move my old HP 6P further away from the desktop. The HP printer server that I was using was having a problem if I sent a large print job to the printer so I wanted to do the USB to parallel.
 
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