In observance of Independence Day, DataPro will be closed Thursday, July 4th, 2024. Orders placed after 12:00 PM PST on Wednesday, July 3rd will be processed on Friday, July 5th.
Parallel printers are a thing of the past, some might say. Nowadays, it's
all about USB printers and network printers, these technophiles would have
you believe. But their short-sightedness prevents them from seeing the long-range
implications of what parallel can do. How long? Try 1300 feet.
PARALINK
Parallel Send & Receive Pair
Special order - not normally stocked.
EACH
$
79.00
22 in stock
The DataPro ParaLink converter connects a computer to
a printer up to 1300 feet away. That's right: you can plug
your computer into a printer that's a quarter of a mile away. That's
more than four times the standard usable range of CAT5 wire, and eighty-six times
farther than USB will go.
What use could possibly exist for a printer and computer to maintain
such a long-distance relationship? Well, if you were hiding in your
secret underground lair and wanted to deliver messages to the volcano's
surface a quarter of a mile above you, this would do the trick. If you're
working on top-secret operations and can't trust your print jobs over the
"public internet", this would circumvent potentially-wiretapped lines.
The ParaLink device consists of a transmitter and a receiver. The
transmitter plugs directly into a IEEE-1284 Parallel port (DB25F);
the receiver plugs into a Centronics Parallel type printer
(CN36F), the clunky snap-in thing with the metal clips.
The transmitter and receiver are sold as a set, and function in place
of a standard parallel printer cable.
The connection between the two devices is via RJ1104 on UTP wire
or standard Telco type flat wire (basic four-pin telephone wire).
Unlike typical Telco (telephone) wiring, however, the wire map used
for ParaLink is pin-to-pin, not cross-over.
