I am seriously into this LCD:

http://www.crystalfontz.com/products...CFAH2004ARMCJP

The negative red one (red letters on black background).

It is, to date, the only negative red four line display I have been able to find.

This display uses the HD44780 controller chip, and as such, I believe needs to be hooked up to a printer port (parallel port).

The problem is that I need this display for a project that is fully built in my head (and it is freaking killer!!!!) but I will for time and money reasons be unable to tackle the project for at least 18 months!

When I build this rig, parallel ports will likely no longer be in existence.

Will there be (or are there now) parallel to USB converters?

I know crystal fonts serial displays are able to run via USB adapters ........ but I have never seen parallel to USB adapters.

Any thoughts?

CF tech support has so far ignored my question.

are they phasing out parallel ports? that is especially not good for your LCD project. however, what about older printers? i have a HP laser printer that runs on parallel. i doubt that mobo manufacturers would leave out a parallel port unless they had and adapter.

i may be wrong tho

brandon

where did you hear that from Put? I seriosly doubt Parrallel ports are going anywhere. Hell the floppy still round, as is the serial port.

Hell Guys - I was pretty sure the legacy free boards that came out this year were sans serial ports and parallel ports,

It is already hard to buy a new parallel printer,

Maybe I am wrong.

Edit:

The Abit AT7 and IT7 are all I could find with a very quick search.

I really think the next generation of boards with be completely legacy free.

Although I seriously doubt that Parallel ports will be phased out completely in the next year and a half, I do feel your pain. So here's a little help (Google's a great thing):

http://www.usb-port.com/bf1284.html

You're probably gonna be looking at the BF-1284-25, the 25-pin one, for regular Parallel port connections, not the other one, which is Centronics/36 pin. They'll both run you about $25.

Hope this helps, and be careful, I'm not too experienced with USB/Parallel conversions, but most LCD's aren't just looking for the physical parallel port, what their looking is for the specific I/O address that is usually assigned to LPT1:. It might be tricky convincing your LCD to communicate through the USB port and not LPT1, just plugging in an adapter doesn't sound to me lie it's likely to do that. You might want to keep pestering the people @ Crystalfontz until they answer you in case there's any weird configurations you have to do. Again, good luck!

firstly i seriously doubt that parallel ports will be going away anytime soon. secondly, in 18 months im almost totally sure that 1)the lcd your looking at will have been discountinued and a newer version will take its place and that 2)that newer lcd will likely have a usb or firewire or some other standard thats on mobos 18 months from now.

unless your just buying the thing now. im sure that they will have one with the right connection in the future.

neotheducky

was planning to buy it now.

you guys really think that Abit is out to lunch releasing boards (popular overclocker friendly boards) 5 months ago with no serial or parallel ports?

These mobo companies usually follow a projected path when they revise configs ....... they don't just randomly drop off standard connections at a whim.

Time will tell.

You might have a point, at least on the very high-end boards, we might start to see the dissapearance of standard parallel and serial ports.. but on everyday end-user boards, I think they/'ll be around for a good long while still. Too many people/companies still use regular parallel printers. I tend to consider myself an early adopter, and I didn't have a USB printer until just this last year.

In our high-end world, you could probably be right, we're not gonna see many parallel and serial ports in the newest top of the line mobos.. (and those Abit boards are part of the proof on that), but I have a feeling that your average Joe's Dell, Gateway, or (shudder) Emachine will still have a parallel port for several more years.

Edit: And at least in my line of work, dealing with production systems for big companies, they use a *lot* of hardware, and a lot of devices are still being produced, that need to be plugged into parallel and serial ports to communicate with PC's. What is more likely to happen is that they will be a bit more slowly, be phased out, and kept only in specialized and legacy applications.

Anyway, good luck with that cable, here's hoping it works out for ya.

thanks for the link!

I wasn't planning on the killer new rig with the red LCD being a Dell .........

lol

HRmmmm me has that AT7 max2 and both a serial and usb crystalfontz display . Works good. My laser printer is just now hooked up to a diff computer in my home network and still accesible.

i doubt that converter would work

what u need is this




this thing was especially designed to converts parall things to usb, also theres a version avaliable for serial to usb

more info here http://www.jalcds.de/board/thread.ph...eecfa4cf628aca

product link http://www.ravar.net/R_ProductUSBs.htm

Thanks alot Clown!