a printer oddity

[Mr Ian Primus]

--- "Roy J. Tellason" <rtellason at verizon.net> wrote:

> First is that right next to the usual parallel
> connection there's another 
> connector,  a DB25.  That bit seems to be a little
> loose,  and I'm thinking 
> plug-in board maybe? 

Yup. A lot of OkiData printers had their parallel
ports on a plug in card, which in turn has a connector
on it for a piggyback serial interface board. IIRC
it's held in with some plastic clips.

> The other thing is that attached to that connector
> is a little adapter,  which 
> has an RJ-45 socket on the back side of it.  The
> plug side of it has only a 
> small number of the 25 pins actually installed.  If
> I can figure out a way to 
> pop the shell open maybe I'll trace it out, 
> otherwise I'll probably take the 
> ohmmeter approach.  :-)

That's pretty common as well for serial interfaces.
Using these little RJ45 adapter dongles made serial
cables much easier (and cheaper). Need null modem?
Change the dongle. In-wall wiring was easier, with
RJ45's at the wall. There isn't much of a standard
wiring for these, unfortunately. They were sold as
"kits" with no pins inserted, and a prewired RJ45
connector. You inserted the pins into the DB25 and
clipped the thing together.

-Ian