Originally Posted by
netstruggler
I think that is a 'feature' of parallel port emulators in Windows.
You could create a raw printer device under windows like
this, and then assign an LPT port to it as follows:
- Do a "right mouse" click on your printers name
- Choose "Properties" from the popup menu
- Click on the "Ports" tab at the top
- Write down the name of your USB port name
- Click on the "Enable Printer Pooling" checkbox
- Scroll through all of your listed ports and click on "LPT1" port.
- Click on "Apply" and "Ok".
I've used the second part of this in the past, but not the raw printer part. I wouldn't be too hopeful of this working myself, but you never know.
If I was you I'd concentrate on using a usb to serial route. Problems you're likely to have are:
- the usb serial device appears as COM 15 but your software only allows for COM1 to COM4.
- a bad serial cable ( there are so many variants of serial cables out there that the chances of having one that doesn't work is very high.
Does your printer have a 15-pin serial connector, or a 9-pin one?
Before we go customising Windoze lets see what it is currently doing. The appearance of LPT1 vs PRN1 printer ports in device manager would be interesting to observe. The UGREEN
20225 (I presume that is the model you have - please be specific when asking for help) USB to
IEEE 1284 parallel adapter is touted as driverless, however it just means the drivers are automagically installed when first connected. Comment: IEEE 1284 is the standard for Centronics parallel printer ports. They solved those pesky printer problems decades ago.
Lets have a peek to see what Windows USB plug-and-pray (
) is doing: First plug in the USB adapter to your computer and the plotter. Make sure the plotter is powered up
only after Windows is fully up and running. Wait two minutes after the plotter has finished its power up sequence and the pens are stopped, so it has time to decide if it installs device drivers. Bring up
device manager in Windows
control panel, and select
show hidden devices from the menu. See what is showing there for
LPT and
PRN and
USB ports and
printer devices - list them all in your response (or expand and post a screen shot). Please advise if
any devices have a yellow mark beside them, and if so, which. This yellow mark is important for troubleshooting.
I'm glad you have confirmed the plotter is functional from a hardware point of view. No rogue capacitor problems then. Good.
This page
https://www.rolanddga.com/support/pr...-vinyl-cutter? and
https://www.rolanddga.com/support/pr...dapter-enduser seems to be similar to your plotter. Some of the information may be relevant to your device also. The drivers may also work at a pinch - leave that for now as your solution may be simpler.
Looking at the associated user manual shows the serial cable wiring is somewhat non-standard, hence I understand your reluctance to move from parallel to serial. I agree. If it worked in the past, it should be able to work with the current hardware also. At least you don't have to worry about voltage levels with a parallel port - they are all 5volts and handshaking is part of the IEEE standard.
Oh yes, let us know which version of Windoze you are running all this one. 7, 8, 10, 11? Home, Enterprise, etc? 32 bit or 64 bit?