SABRENT USB to Parallel IEEE 1284 Printer Cable Adapter (CB-CN36)

A pre-20th Century IEEE parallel port connector to more recent USB variant is what you need if you have an old but built to last and still working well machine that needs one. In my case, a 1999, HP LaserJet 4050, high speed workhorse. After scrounging through HP’s Legacy driver pages, I found two that supposedly worked: postscript and native HP talk. Installed them both and the native driver worked no issues.

Many of us have newer computers that lack parallel printer port, but have old laser printers that are work-horses but incompatible due to newer USB connections. With help from this cable, i was able to use my Brother MFC 4650 multifunction printer (from 2000), and printer is working flawlessly in 2017 with windows 7, windows 10 computers.. The review written by 'Wally Waffleson January 22, 2015" was the most helpful. I am rewriting his/her suggestions: -------------------------- Installation Guide: 1) Plug the Sabrent cable into the back of your ancient printer. 2) Turn on the printer. 3) Plug the cable into a USB port on your PC. Windows should automatically install drivers for the USB device, and when it's done it will report the following devices as "Ready to use": "USB Printing Support" and "No Printer Attached". 4) Open the control panel's Printer listing, and select "Add a printer." 5) Select "Add a local printer." 6) When prompted to "Choose a printer port," select "Use an existing port," and from the drop-down list find and select the item containing "Virtual printer port for USB." It may look something like "USB001 (Virtual printer port for USB)." 7) When prompted to "Install the printer driver," if you cannot find your ancient printer listed, click "Windows Update." The installer will contact MicroSoft's online database to search for more printer drivers. This WILL take several minutes. 8) If you still cannot find your printer, refer to your printer's official documentation (a web search may be necessary) to see if it lists any "compatible drivers." (My printer's manual lists 9 alternative printers with compatible drivers. I selected "Epson LQ-570+ ESC/P 2" which was a successful match.) 9) Click "Next" and continue the printer installation to the end as normal. 10) Once the installation is complete and you are prompted to print a test page, print a test page to confirm your success! Troubleshooting: 1) If your print job sits in the queue for a long time before eventually changing its status to "out of paper" even though the printer is clearly not having any paper issues, your cable probably is not plugged all the way into the printer. Ensure the plug is in all the way and try again. (After my first hour of trying to get the printer to work, I discovered the cable wasn't plugged in all the way, despite the cord catch successfully latching.) 2) If your printer is printing random garbage, you probably installed the wrong driver. Install a different driver and try again. 3) Consult the original manual for your printer. Fortunately, many old technical manuals can be found in PDF form on the internet. 4) If you unplug the USB cable from your computer, then plug it back into a different port, your computer WILL think you have plugged in an entirely new device. You will have to either plug the USB cable back into the same port you originally used, or reinstall the printer drivers.

This cable may or may not work for you, but it's not the cable's fault. My old HP LaserJet 4, looks and works like brand new, but I haven't used it for a while since newer computers have no printer port. I needed a printer for shipping labels in a separate location in my home and when I saw this cable I thought my problem was solved, but my computer, an HP laptop, with Windows 10 Pro, didn't even recognize anything had been plugged in when I connected it. Before troubleshooting, I ordered another cable like this from another company and the same thing happened so I decided to look further. I have several computers so I connected another laptop with a dual boot installation, Windows 7 home and Ubuntu Linux 16.04 LTS and it works with both. I had to use the manual setup because it isn't recognized like USB printers usually are. Connect the printer to the laptop and click add printer. Windows 7 wants to scan for a printer which it won't find, but click on the line saying yours isn't in the list. Choose local printer, then choose the port. Scroll down the list provided and you'll see a USB virtual printer port, select that. Then choose your make and model, in my case, the HP LaserJet 4. It will load the driver, ask if you want a test page, which you can print to confirm, and you're done. Works great. Linux is also easy. Click add printer, select the USB port, select the make and model of the printer, print a test page. Works great. You're done. Windows 10 is another story. In my case, there are no current drivers for the LaserJet 4. You can go through the same procedure, click add local printer, there's a USB port option, but if you have an old HP printer like, mine, when you select HP, the long list of models presented does not include a lot of very popular, but old models, like my LaserJet 4. Looking around on the web, lots of sites say they have a driver, but they look a little sketchy to me, you can try those at your own risk. So, bottom line, cable does what it's supposed to do as long as your operating system has a driver. If it's the latest update of Windows 10, there are a lot of old printers that are no longer supported. Since I have one computer where it does work, I stopped investigating. There might be a way to get Windows 10 on board, but it's not plug and play.

First Problem: Windows 11 sees the cable, but will not list it in the device manager - can't use it. Second Problem: It does not come with the listed driver CD. Third Problem: I went to the website to look up the manual and any drivers. The website gave numerous errors. Then went to the support form, filled it out, and it too produced an error when I tried to submit the form. Forth Problem: After being on hold for 12 minutes it offered to give a call back. Call back does not work. It is now 18 minutes and no help.

I would give the cable itself 5 stars but the overall experience only 4. I wanted to use it between my iMac and an old Okidata OL400e laser printer. The Mac OS recognized the cable immediately and named it " USB2.0-Print" (initial space intended) even with no printer on the other end. Even when I did hook up the printer the System Preferences said it was offline, and I couldn't get it to detect otherwise. BTW my iMac is dual-boot, and the Windows XP side drove the printer just fine - so I knew it was some sort of OS problem. Sabrent Support was no help at all; their entire written response was "You must install the drivers for the printer you are attaching." Anyway I got extremely lucky and saw some web talk about something called USBTB, whose purposes is to help Macs through this. I cleared all my printer settings, then installed the USBTB, which insisted I pick from some HP front-end drivers even though my printer wasn't HP. Again I got lucky and picked one which satisfied the software, to the point at which I could redefine the printer settings (in System Preferences) to the Gutenprint OL400e driver in my system. It was trial-and-error and it mostly didn't work, until it did. Even now the system tells me my Oki is "idle" when in fact it is turned off - but it works when I sent a print job its way, which was what I wanted. Anyway the cable does its job, but I wish it had been easier to get set up!

First, while I did not pick this up from the tech notes, the cable is 6' long. A plus since one ad indicated it was just 1' long. Second, I have three ancient HP LaserJet printers--one 4 and two 5MPs--with at least two toner cartridges for each one. Workhorses that are perfect for all the B&W printing of manuals and other documents. It is silly to waste money printing them on new color inkjet printers. I had no trouble getting it to work on Win7, but no luck on Win10. I am continuing with work on that last platform since I see some have been able to get it to work. But in the meantime I just turned an old Win7 PC I was about to throw away into the B&W printer server for my home network. I bought a second cable so I could have two LaserJet printers hooked up. One for printing of standard pages, the other for envelopes. I can't believe how little they cost and how easy it was to get them to work. There is no real instruction manual, by the way. My manual told me to plug the USB end of the cable into the computer and the printer connector into the printer. Seriously--that was it. Of course, it was all I needed ... I didn't know how to rate Tech Support since I didn't need any although there was a way to contact them and I may ask for help on the Win 10 problem. Later note: I have no idea why it did not work the first time, but the second time I tried the adapter with a Win 10 PC, it worked perfectly. No setup of any kind. Just plug in both ends of the cable and look for the printer on your PC. It shows up as the correct printer. Just a couple of days ago I was given two more LaserJet 4 printers along with nearly full toner cartridges. I will purchase at least one more adapter and these printers will have a new life.

Works perfectly to adapt an ancient UPS label printer to USB, just tell windows the printer type and driver on the port and away it goes. Also works with CUPS and a raspberry pi so you can add airprint to the same UPS printer.

Used this to connect a very old HP LaserJet 4M. The old cable just stopped working, probably got damaged by my movers, but it appeared to be fine. The print job would act like it was working, but the printer would just flash and then nothing would happen. This cable solved the problem. Works just like it should. No more print issues. Quality is good.

usei o produto para ativar uma roland cx24 antiga e funcionou maravilhosamente bem

Excelente. Funciona de maravilla mejor que el mismo producto en el mercado.

Ottimo cavo

Bought to connect an old Star LC10 Dot Matrix Printer to a Linux Laptop. It worked perfectly. Will need to comment later on how it holds up with regular use, as I have just started using it. Fit good. Connectivity good. Value - good.

EL producto llegó correctamente. La longitud del cable es aceptable. Además, venía con un alargador USB que no he necesitado usar. Funciona a la perfección. Probada con una impresora de tickets de EPSON.