It's just an old parallel port dongle I'm not sure what kind. It looks generic and specific to this company. I'll try to get a picture of it and some more information the next time I'm at the shop.
I use it for a collating machine that my family bought in the early 90s. You have to program the machine with the computer. The machine itself takes up an entire large room. I can't just upgrade it to something new because I don't have a spare 20k laying around. The dongle doesn't seem to play nice with anything newer than Windows 98. I've been attempting to figure out a way to use the software in a VM or a more recent OS for about 15 years now. Ideally I'd like to get it working in Linux because we've managed to migrate all the other PCs in the shop over to Linux.
Ian Lewis
I don't mind dedicating a machine to this I'd just prefer not to since the company went out of business and if I ever lose the dongle I'm fucked. I was hoping maybe some other user had managed to by-pass a similar DRM.
Daniel Walker
coreboot.org/Binary_situation anything from AMD before 2012 should be without PSP. Rhe most powerful CPUs without PSP are Trinity I think.
Jackson Smith
You said parallel port. If I were you I would try a parallel port to USB adapter and then USB pass through in a VM. But then you'd need USB drivers for that VM and then the problem would be you're connecting a parallel port device as USB. Seems like that would be an issue but maybe solvable with software.
Although if I were really you I'd still stick with the old hardware, maybe buy a replacement pc to keep in case and some parts.
Colton Campbell
quality Zig Forums thread.
Kevin Bennett
Yes, the FX series are pre-PSP. The FX-8350 is probably the most practical bet, as the FX 9xxx series have ridiculous 220W TDP that only a few motherboards can support, and require liquid cooling. You might also consider Opterons if you want a real beast. I have dual Opteron 6282 SEs in an ASUS KPGE-D16 motherboard. This has a Libreboot port, and is close to being the most powerful non-botnet x86 system you can get.
That almost certainly won't work... Windows 3.1 or 98 running as guest is very unlikely to support the USB to parallel adapter. What might work is if the virtual parallel port provided to the Linux host by the adapter can be passed through to the VM. I found a potentially informative thread here:
How much did that cost you? I took a quick look at eBay and they're asking $900 for the cpu.
Eli Morales
but doesn't the pi require proprietary firmware to run anyway? and even so the CPU is a black box too isn't it?
good info man, saving your post. yeah that's the problem I realized hence why I thought just maybe there may be some piece of software somewhere that lets you send parallel port output to a USB device on 98. unlikely though.
Jaxon Johnson
I just wonder how many people have this same problem. I know the local screen printing place had the same issue with some of their equipment. There was a lot of industrial equipment made around that time that are tied to an early IBM compatible PC with a dongle for DRM. As far as I know most of this stuff was never worked around and everybody is still keeping an old 386 or 486 around to keep that stuff going. I'd really like to learn how these things work.
Jack Roberts
Old equipment relying on serial and parallel ports is why they are still common on modern low end motherboards. The h310 board I am using right now still has headers for both. If you dig a bit you can even find modern Chinese boards with floppy controllers on them.
