[vox-tech] computer pretending to be a printer

[Dylan Beaudette]

Hi everyone,

We have a rather expensive analytical machine in our department that provides 
few options for saving its output to file. The manual suggests that it can be 
used via windows networking to save its data to a remove windows share over 
ethernet. There is currently no way to get an ethernet cable into this room, 
so that is out of the question for now.... In place of saving an electronic 
copy of the output, the machine sends data to printer. This is most annoying 
as it can use lots of ink, and the printer has a tendancy to jam - and if it 
doesn't get printed, then the results are lost!

So here is the idea... Would it be possible to setup a simple linux box 
connected to the printer port (i think that it is a standard parallel port) 
of the machine, and have the linux box filter the information and save it to 
a file? being a PPC person I have no idea if this is even possible with the 
protocol used for parallel printers... but i thought that it would be 
interesting to try. 

any thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

-- 
Dylan Beaudette
Soil Science Graduate Group
University of California at Davis