Keywords: USB, LPT, parallel, parallel port, printer port, converter, adaptor; programmer, ATmega, ISP, FPGA, CPLD, JTAG, direct port access emulation, IEEE 1284, IEEE1284

Converter From USB To Parallel

A reverse device called LPTzUSB for connecting a USB printer to a legacy parallel port is available since 2006.

This USB2LPT is not suitable for capturing parallel printer data. For this purpose, LptCap exists.

For ordering devices, please email me.

• Read this when you plan to purchase: Not recommended for new designs
• List of successfully tested programs
• To driver software
• USB2LPT is a multifunction device but not complete, missing JTAG due to documentation
• Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
• The Application Programmer Interface (API) for direct access to USB2LPT without INPOUT32.DLL or similar

Operational areas

• Programming devices (AVR, JTAG…)
• Data logger, data acquisition
• slow controls, like for garden, model railway…
• Synchronous bus connections, like I²C, SPI…
• Laboratory automation, simple robots

• Time-critical equipment, like direct stepper motor controls (above 100 Hz or so)
  Due to free programmability of the microcontroller used you may run dedicated stepper motor control software on its 8051 core and so greatly reduce the impact to the overall PC performance. Access to source code of the stepper motor control software is required.
• Again, for the blind and deaf: It doesn't work for stepper motors, so not for CNC machines.

  A typical boring e-mail conversation … please do not ask the same again and again:

  > I have to control an old CCD camera with LTP [sic] bidirectional [sic, surely not] protocol. My application needs to communicate with the CCD console to start the image integration (pulsing and clearing the ccd array), stop the acquisition (saving the data in a HW buffer) and download them on PC.

  Expect image download times in hours, even with high-speed USB2LPT. If it would ever work. Possibly your hardware requires 5 V signaling. Then USB2LPT Low-Speed would help, then expect image download time in days.

  > All functions are quickly performed with old PC (with win 98 or XP) having a LPT port, but today we would like to use the new laptops or desktop computers to do this (but without the parallel port).

  1. Don't use cripplebooks. Only laptops having an ExpressCard slot are extensible enough.
  2. Avoid using closed-source hardware-accessing software, insist upon getting source.
     Otherwise you are bound to old hardware and operating systems for the entire lifetime of your equipment. The same applies to Dongles.
  3. Check whether your software relies to InpOut32.dll. If so, you can skip 4. and 5. and you are quite lucky.
  4. Check whether your software can handle non-standard port addresses.
  5. Check whether your software, especially its hardware access, runs under 64bit Windows (for the future).
  6. Buy any PCI or PCIexpress parallel port card.

• Things with »intentionally« hard-coded (non-hookable) drivers, such as Dongles (= software protection plugs)
  For most software there is a USB dongle available too.
• Again, for the blind and deaf: It doesn't work for software protection devices (dongles).

Restrictions, Performance

Interception of port access instructions take place in the driver in privileged ring0 mode using hand-optimized assembly code, so this is as fast as possible. But the time for the I/O interception is small compared to the time needed for each IN instruction — a USB frame must be awaited, at least 125 µs. This may lead to 100x lengthening of time! (High-Speed USB2LPT)

I will hope that your software is not so much input-intensive. While processing time is lengthened, the processor yields to other running processes, so the processing load is kept low.

There are two known options to shorten awaiting of IN instructions:

• Modifying the software and optimizing its data flow enables concatenating multiple IN instructions into one USB packet. But that's exactly what should be avoided.
• A replacement host controller driver which can insert outstanding BULK transfers into the current (not the next) USB microframe. This is very hard to program, if even possible in a non-realtime OS, I cannot afford this solution. However, at least one company told me that they wrote such a driver but for DOS. But didn't gave me source code:-(

It is stupid to use this converter only for a printer! All other converters do this job correct! They are inexpensive too.
However, this converter contains a printer-compatible USB interface, therefore, printing is possible without loss of performance, see USB2LPT as multifunction device.

Programs that come with her own kernel driver will work too. This ist due to the “brute force” of a debug register trap.

Interferences with debuggers may occur. For program developers, this converter is relatively uninteresting.

Should I use this?

There are some better options to get a parallel port if you need one. Read this list of available adapters and their advantages / disadvantages:

• PCMCIA:
  • + True parallel port with ECP/EPP and expected speed
  • + Base address same as built-in (378h, 278h) due to ISA roots
  • + No driver necessary
  • – Only available on very old or specialized laptops and notebooks
  
  
• ExpressCard (PCIe based):
  • + True parallel port with ECP/EPP and expected speed
  • – Base address offset to >1000h (your software must cope with this, or you need a patch or an address-shift driver)
    But there are exceptions!
  • ± Driver sometimes necessary, depends on operating system version and model
  • + Available on current laptops, notebooks
  • – Not available on subnotebooks and netbooks
  • – Expensive
  • – Cumbersome due to the thick cable on the litte notebook
  • – Likelihood of confusion with USB based ExpressCards, see below
  
  
• ExpressCard (USB based):
  • → Electrically same as USB→ParallelPrinter adapter! See below
  
  
• USB→ParallelPrinter adapter:
  • + Driverless PnP support for parallel printers, emulates a USB printer
  • + USB available everywhere
  • – Not a true parallel port, doesn't work with almost all programs, including scanners, relay cards, data acquisition etc., except my programs especially prepared for such adapters, e.g. DiscoLitez WinAmp plugin, AD9834 DDS generator interface
  • – Even when resellers claim uniqueness, these are always the same (they lying)
  
  
• PCI or PCIe cards (for desktop computers):
  • + True parallel port with ECP/EPP and expected speed
  • – Base address offset to >1000h (your software must cope with this, or you need a patch or an address-shift driver)
  • ± Driver sometimes necessary, depends on operating system version and model
  • + Cheap and easy to handle
  
  
• This USB2LPT:
  • + Emulated (virtualized) true parallel port with ECP/EPP
  • – Reduced speed due to emulation and (mainly) USB bus transfer cycles (expect 10..100 times slower)
  • + Base address same as built-in (378h, 278h)
  • – Doesn't work with programs that expect a true PnP driver stack (scanners, ZIP drives) and software that disables port access redirection (dongles)
  • + USB available everywhere
  • – Driver necessary
  • – Driver unstable, tricky, currently no driver for Linux
  • + Smart and handy cabling with thin USB wire
  • + open-source, multi-language, extensible, life-time support

Current versions

Low-Speed (cloning instructions)

USB2LPT Release 1.6 2008—2012, Quantity: 750 PCBs Microcontroller: Atmel ATmega8-16TQ — AVR core at 12.5 MHz — USB Low Speed — True 5 V design No Crystal required. Thanks to continued work of Objective Development Crystal is optional, typical 12 MHz, but also 15 or 16 MHz. Integrated bootloader for firmware update via USB (squeezed into 2 KByte of Flash ROM) Two USB interfaces (i.e. multifunction device) for raw access and driverless USB HID operation Plug housing, yellow activity LED, USB-MiniB receptacle, 25 pin SubD receptacle PCB population alternative available for 3.3 V operation of ATmega controller using a dual diode Industrial PCB (two-sided, 150 µm), very easy to populate, eight components at all (4x through-hole, 4x SMD) Hardware and firmware design conforms to USB idle-mode power consumption limit (≤ 500 µA) Cloning recommended – useful where low-speed is sufficient Useful for relay cards, light or LED control, LC displays, slow-moving stepper motors, amateur radio control like for SDR-1000, I²C bus control, garden / brewery control and supervising The firmware from december 2010 to february 2012 is not compatible to Windows Vista and Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit) – please update!

High-Speed (cloning instructions with video)

USB2LPT Release 1.7 2008—2012, Quantity: 850 PCBs Microcontroller: Cypress CY7C68013A-56LFXC (FX2LP) — 8051 core at 24 MHz — USB High Speed Integrated bootloader code for firmware update via USB, compatible to the vend_ax code by Cypress Three USB interfaces (i.e. multifunction device) for raw access, USB printer emulation, and driverless USB HID operation Industrial PCB (two-sided, 150 µm), reflow soldering Plug housing, blue High-Speed LED, USB-MiniB receptacle, 25 pin SubD receptacle 3.3 V design with disable-able pull-up to 5 V on every port pin Three extra lines for using as 20-way I/O device (good for simple parallel high-voltage AVR programmers) Possibility for downloading volatile firmware extension code to RAM for problem-specific tasks using GPIF and true 480 MBit/s New very-low-power low-voltage-drop regulator conforms to USB idle-mode power consumption limit (≤ 500 µA) Professional clones recommended Useful for programming devices, FPGA bitstream download, graphical LCD, medium-moving stepper motors (maybe 1000 steps per second) High-Speed USB2LPT are sold out as any cheap Chinese CY7C68013A development board can be filled with my usb2lpt2.iic firmware and behaves exactly as my USB2LPT then. Compare the schematics. Especially for integrating into existing devices such a solution is preferable.

You may order devices by mailing to the address below.

Software

That download you need for running the device on your host PC:

• Driver for Windows 98/Me/2k/XP/Vista/7/8/10 (, )
  These drivers are not so much plug'n'play. Up to three LPT port address rages are automatically captured. Up to 9 devices may be connected due to naming scheme. The driver and software is available in 14 languages.
  Do not try this driver with any other hardware, this will simply not work and may confuse your operating system later!
  The installer creates four extra pages for “Properties” in Device Manager.
  Moreover, this .zip archive contains all source files for the driver, the property sheet pages (14 languages), the help file (3 languages), the microcontroller firmware for all USB2LPT revisions, and the utilities for handling the firmware, all in its latest version.
  The driver is certified.

  Note: For Low-Speed USB2LPT (1.5 and 1.6) with Vista/7/8/10 the chip uses INTERRUPT instead of BULK pipes. As a real bad consequence, emulation speed drops by factor 8. You can only circumvent this problem when using 2K/XP and switch to BULK, see Device Manager — Properties for USB2LPT. Better you choose High-Speed.
  
  If you don't got an installation manual:
• a Pamphlet.doc as WinWord2000 file . As all images are linked (not embedded), you must unzip the entire archive and then open the .DOC file.
• For the very rare case of needing port access redirection in Win64 kernel mode you have to disable PatchGuard. Otherwise, you will get a Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) 0x109 after some seconds or minutes.
  
  That download you may need when you make your own USB2LPT:
• This package contains english-message utilities (source files and executables) for USB2LPT production.
  To be integrated in two-language utilities, because I don't want to maintain doubled source code …
  
  

Usage

• Emulation: Here you can set up properties like the port address emulated, the usage of debug registers, etc.

• Statistics: Here you can inspect how USB2LPT is working, and maybe shooting some trouble
• Monitor: Here you can inspect and modify port pin values
• Title unknown: Here you can see the real LPT number assignment

Via IOCTL code IOCTL_VLPT_AnchorDownload, you can inject additional firmware to speed-up your applications. Therefore, USB2LPT is a Pocket Development Kit for EZUSB AN2131/CY7C68013 too.

These Property Pages are also available in the languages German, French, Italian, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Hungarian, and Bazilian Portuguese.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

You can read the FAQ by following this link.

Clones

• On Taobao
• On AliExpress

When you encounter problems using the device or driver, please include following information:

• Your operating system and bitness (32 or 64 bit) — processor type, service packs, virus scanner, video resolution are out of interest
• Your software, ideally providing a download link, so I can reproduce behaviour
• A description what you do to finally get the error message
• A description what you seen on statistics property sheet page before
• The exact wording of error message, for blue screens the (five) hexadecimal numbers