why is there an old printer port

on newer motherboards? I would think that most of the older printers that used the old connection have either broke down or the manufacturer has stopped making ink for them. Is there any other widespread usage for this port?

 

I wonder about that stuff sometimes. Why (except for XP and SATA drivers) do we still have floppy drive connectors? Some old printers are still in use. A lot of the legacy stuff hangs around for a while.

 

LOL, I always wondered about that too? I mean considering the speed of those printers? I had a Raven 9-pin still going a few years ago, I could never figure out why it needed such a large port? Perhaps it's like the difference between the IDE ribbons and SATA cables of today.

 

Most of them we use for testing purposes; my new computer does not have them, so I have to use USB instead. but sometimes that not work, so I have to go back to my old testing dino.

 

Hi All,

That was a parallel port sending a complete word on each cycle. It was much faster than serial at that time. It also carried several useful feed back signals. USB is much faster today than serial used to be.

Jim

 

Some newer motherboards have done away with the parallel port on the back of the PC, but still have a header on the motherboard. My mobo has both a "PRINTER1" header (parallel) and a "COM1" header (serial). If needed, I could plug a cable into the header and run it to one of the PCI slot brackets on the rear of the PC. The cable would terminate to the parallel connector (or serial connector) and I could then plug in an antique device and still have support without the need to clutter the main rear I/O panel.
:-D