Amiga 500 Parallel port and dot matrix printer, Cable?

[B93]

I’m looking at getting an old dot matrix printer for my Amiga 500 and was wondering if a special cable is required?

I remember reading that a special cable was required for the Amiga 1000 because the pins were totally different but can’t find any info on the Amiga 500

I’m hoping I can get away with a standard pc parallel printer cable as I know I have one lying around but don’t want to risk damaging the Amiga.

[lesta_smsc]

As far as I'm aware the Amiga parallel port is same as PC since quite a few PC printers (that had parallel port) had Amiga drivers with no requirement to change the pin configuration.

Therefore, you do not need to limit yourself to dot matrix printers as some inkjets also work!

[Vypr]

About the only requirement I can think of is that a lot of the older style dot matrix printers used a Centronics plug but the parallel side should, as lest_smsc pointed out, just be a standard PC parallel. so you might need a cable like this:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-8-Metre...kAAOSweEZcyW4G

[jbilander]

If you want the exact pinout, I have gathered some information regarding the parallel port here:

https://github.com/jbilander/sdbox/b...rallel-port.md

[B93]

Thanks for all the info, great to know some inkjet will work also and that the parallel end is standard.

Im after a more vintage look to what I print so was thinking dot matrix. I’m liking kindwords as a basic yet functional word processor so opened up the manual and have a list of printers as a starting point

I’ve found a box of old paper so now just need to find a printer from the list

[lesta_smsc]

If it helps, the printer I had was Canon BJC-4200.

This site has some details about using it on Amiga:

http://www.ghira.mistral.co.uk/canon-and-amiga.html