ABC Products ® USB to Parallel Port Adapter Cable Lead IEEE1284 for Printers Printer adaptor 36 pin Canon Epson Brother Lexmark HP Hewlett Packard IEEE-1284 Centronics PC and MAC Windows 98SE, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, MAC os V8.6~9.2 & Higher

Well it's been a while since I had the old dot matrix working, but after various adapters/cards etc I finally found one that works! Simple USB connection to the back of my old Panasonic KXP-1081 printer. Selected USB0003 as the printer port, generic 9 pin driver, and away we go. Will be great for printing postage labels etc but I wouldn't try printing your graphics covered document, B&W 9 pin printer isn't quite up to the task!This is the only cable I've found that works, as such it gets the 5 stars. No complaints so far.

At present I have a Sony FS 215S series laptop running XP docked on a docking station, (Sony Port Replicator) connected to an 18 year old Canon BJ 200ex printer by a conventional LPT1 Port Parallel Cable. (36 pin plug at printer end 25 at docking station) This I use for everyday cheap printing. In view of the upcoming non-support of Windows XP in April 2014 I searched on line for a USB product which would connect the printer (I refill the black cartridge for approx. 50p a time) to my second computer which has a Vista operating system. This cable seemed (and is) of good quality and appeared to fit my requirement. I connected my XP machine by the new ABC USB/Parallel cable as suggested by other reviewers (no instructions with the cable) and had no trouble installing as the correct Driver was already on my 8 year old laptop for the printer. Easy I thought! Not so for the Vista machine. I could not find a driver for a BJ 200ex. After trying different Canon Drivers and the Windows 'updated drivers' Canon UK support was contacted by e-mail. As I was beginning to suspect, no Drivers had actually been produced for Vista because of the age of the Printer. The cable is fine but it is worth checking before purchase that a Driver is available for your Operating System and your old Printer. Looks like the end of my trusty printer.Update:- Eureka!! After more experimenting I found a driver which worked. The Canon BJ30 driver was already available on my machine in the Windows Vista Printer list but on the first `test printing' several days ago it printed rubbish. It appears by shutting the computer down, reconnecting everything and selecting `Replace Existing Driver' in the Printer Wizard, the new BJ30 driver kicked my old BJ 200ex printer into life. Proves the cable is good but needs a bit of patience sometimes for it to work.

Set-up on Windows 7 was easy as described in many other reviews.On Windows 8 however it was much harder work mainly due to Windows 8 being so utterly rubbish at this sort of thing - i.e. home computing.After installing the cable itself I assume the driver was installed correctly (no pop-up). But when the printer is attached things did not go smoothly. Incredibly the wizard will have chosen the wrong driver (no, really it is totally credible, all the clever people at Microsoft must have taken their share options and flown off to the Caymen islands - leaving just a bunch of kids having a laugh at us) , then reboot, then add it manually.However I first wasted a lot of time trying to change the driver on the original printer and failed. So just to repeat:1) Delete the auto installed printer (if you let it get that far)2) Power down the printer3) Reboot the computerNow you are ready to manually install the printer4) The W8 add printer wizard is so awful you have to wait for it to fail and then click on the help and then ask for advanced options.5) Add a local printer and for the port choose USB001.6) Browsing the list of drivers for HP will yield HP Lasjerjet 6L PS Class Printer - but this driver DOES NOT WORK and will result in garbage or blank sheets. Instead you need the 'Windows Update' option.7) After waiting several minutes when complete the correct driver called just "HP Laserjet 6L" should be selectable from the list.8) Power up the printer and connect to a spare USB2 port. NB avoid USB3.9) Test! If not working repeat from step #1 !10) Good luck.

As others have mentioned, the product seems to work fine and is certainly a much cheaper option than replacing your old IEEE-1284 parallel printer. Unfortunately it contains no instructions re. installation and setup of necessary drivers. Fortunately the installation process seems relatively painless once you know what you have to do.Here's what I did for my old Kyocera FS-1010 on windows 7:1 - Plug the USB end of the cable into the computer, leaving printer end unplugged.2 - Windows recognises the cable device and installs the necessary drivers for this, but NOT the printer (yet).3 - Do a restart of the computer (just in case, I'm not sure if this step is really necessary).4 - From windows start menu go to: "Control Panel" > "Hardware and Sound" > "Devices and Printers"5 - Click the "Add a printer" button.6 - Chose "Add a local printer".7 - Check the "Use an existing port" radio button and select your newly added USB printer port (from steps 1 & 2 above) from the menu. On my machine this shows up as "USB0001 (Virtual printer port for USB)". Click "Next".8 - Select printer manufacturer and model from the options listed. In my case the FS-1010 wasn't listed so used FS-1100 KPDL driver instead (which seems to work fine with FS-1010 as far as I can tell so far). Click "Next" to install the printer driver. Print a test page.