Centronics/parallel printer to USB

A friend has just changed his 12-year old Dell PC running XP for a new PC running Windows 7 Home Premium. She has a Brother HL1230 laser printer that has served her well for many years and she wishes to continue to use it for a while longer.

Browsing the web there seem to be drivers that will enable the printer to work on Windows 7, but... the printer has a Centronics/parallel interface, the PC doesn't have such an interface.

I see there are adapters to convert, anyone experience of them? Do they actually work? Any recommendations for one?

Considering you can get a brother laser printer for around £60 these days I don't see the point in faffing around. Yes they do work but they are temperamental imho. When I first started where I currently work there were loads of printers connected via parallel, and also equipment using serial to USB converters etc. I purged it all for good reason!

I have a Belkin one hooked into my Laserjet 4000 - no drivers required on Windows 7 and just works - the only real issue I have had is if you move to a different USB port you have to mess around trying to set driver on right port.

I agree you can, and she is well aware of that. However the running costs of these inexpensive Brother lasers is much higher than the older ones, mainly because the toner cartridges are much smaller with a quoted capacity of around 1,000 pages compared to 6,000 pages of her current one.

Given that an adapter is £5 or so it would seem worthwhile trying one out even if it only means she can use the remaining 75% or so of the present cartridge.

Another option may be to acquire a parallel network printer server, such as one of the old HP JetDirect external boxes. eBay likely has some.

This would allow using the printer without turning on the devices it is connected to.

Is it a desktop? If so, why not just get a standard PCi card with a parallel interface and fit that?

Brilliant (it is a desktop). Why didn't I think of that!. I will follow it up.

There are plenty around and some have an extra serial, or a USB too.

What about an old desktop machine - is there one salvageable from there?


And you are right about the older printers and cartridges - the last way longer and are only marginally more expensive. I still use an HP LJ5 - and get 10,000 pages or more from one cartridge.

Edited by MHC (Mon 04-Nov-13 10:07:53)

As MHC says, there might be a card you can recover from an old PC if you are after a PCI card. If you need a PCI Express card, you'll probably need to buy one. I've had success with serial cards from Lindy - they have a range of parallel port cards and serial/parallel combo cards, which you might find available cheaper from resellers than their online store.

Before buying any card, it's a good idea to establish the driver status for the desired operating system by checking the available downloads on the manufacturers' site. There's several manufacturers of the chipsets used on these cards, including Oxford (now part of PLX Technology) and MOSchip.

I know rather more about the Oxford based cards, as I wrote the patch that added driver support for the Oxford PCI Express multi-port serial cards to FreeBSD. PLX make generic drivers and data sheets freely available to anyone that registers, which often gives you a route to use cards on operating systems after the manufacturer drops driver support.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00354WFI8/ref=pe_385721_...

It is PCI Express, I'm currently investigatiing. Prefer to keep the cost right done if at all possible.

Around £20 for an adapter card at Novatech or similar at Amazon

Thanks, I'd seen those - surprisingly expensive though.

Someone is now lending me a cable so I can try that first. It may be that my friend is happy to use that until she finishes the current cartridge then looks at a new printer.