8 ms·
For quite a while, the parallel port was the only external high(-ish) speed port on PCs, not only used for printing, but also scanning, networking (with a yello
by PreInternet01 4y ago
For quite a while, the parallel port was the only external high(-ish) speed port on PCs, not only used for printing, but also scanning, networking (with a yellow LapLink cable, or, if you wanted to get really fancy, a Xircom Pocket Ethernet adapter that almost did 10Mbits/s) and even storage (various weird MO contraptions, but also a regular hard disk with almost 1MB/s read performance...).
The history in the linked article is quite comprehensive, and touched on the slightly-incompatible (EPP, ECP) standardization efforts for bidirectional use. When USB finally came along, that made things a lot more convenient.
- BirAdam 4y agoEarly USB was terrible on both hardware and software support. It took a long time for most people to stop using parallel. Honestly, the only thing I ever used USB for before the USB2.0 era was computer mice.
- dheera 4y agoI usually ended using the PS/2 adapters because the USB mice wouldn't work when you first plugged them in, but they did if you used the PS/2 adapter, and then I'd just leave them that way.
- dave78 4y agoThis captures the early USB experience pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW7Rqwwth84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW7Rqwwth84
- bluedino 4y agoI had a USB 1 IoMega CD-RW that made quite a few coasters. I got a hold of a FireWire card and a Sony CD-RW (i.Link or whatever they called their version) and never looked back.
- ttul 4y agoOut of desperation, I once soldered a bunch of resistors onto a parallel port connector to create a crude DAC converter so I could get my PC to output "high quality" audio. The results were pretty good! I could play MOD files as if I had an actual sound card. Related: https://retro.m1ner.co.uk/2017/08/homebrew-covox-speech-thing/ https://retro.m1ner.co.uk/2017/08/homebrew-covox-speech-thin...
- YZF 4y agoI've done the same... This was a pretty common hack... R/2R ladders FTW.
- Waterluvian 4y agoAs a young kid I remember developing this conclusion that Macs must be better because ours had a SCSI port and the devices were just better and faster than the parallel port devices of our PC.
- ndespres 4y agoMy first MP3 player (the Rio PMP 300) and digital camera (Canon Powershot 600) both used parallel ports for data transfer. Plenty of other weird things used the port, Autocad’s licensing dongles come to mind. It was really used for some versatile functions!
- Damogran6 4y agoConnectix QuickCam in the hizzouse!