[Coco] Serial to usb printers

[gene heskett]

On Wednesday, June 06, 2012 10:59:10 AM Luis Fernández did opine:

> Thanks
> I understand all that,
> have to plot each letter and besides you have to handle the USB protocol
> which is complex But the question is to the hardware connection, the
> physical connection, voltages etc. .., is it possible?,
> need to interface?
 
Sure you can.  FTDI makes the best serial to usb adapters.  But with 
drivewire you don't have to use it.  It uses a serial port on your pc if 
they are close enough.  All you need is the bit banger cable.

However, in my case as my coco is setup in my "finished" basement, the 
cable length is probably too long (25 feet or more) due to the puny drivers 
in the coco, so my "drivewire" cable is only 2 feet long and feeds a seriel 
to usb adapter, which in turn is plugged into one port of a 7 port usb-2.0 
hub, which in turn is fed from a 30 foot USB2.0 cable (not an FTDI, but an 
Msomething Terminus Technology, they have figured out how to make 
loooooong, as in 10 meters long usb cables work) which comes up here and is 
plugged into one of the 6 USB-2.0 ports on this ASUS motherboard.  
Drivewire is then configured to use /dev/ttyUSB0 and it all Just Works(TM)  

The printer, a Brother HL-2140 is plugged into that same 7 port hub on the 
cocos desk.

Cheers, Gene
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