Help required with medieval serial connections!

[derrick888]

I, like many, am of the USB and Firewire generation but now I've had to hark back to serial connections to try to connect the DB9 female socket on my Powermac Graphite to a DB25 male socket on a wide format 430 HP Designjet printer (designated windows, via Virtual PC 5)

Its all very vague I know: god knows I've been putting off trying to connect these two disparate devices together for weeks...

I shall be in awe of any one who has any idea of how to work around this
i.e using adaptors etc

 

[MisterMe]

Oh, you are running MacOS 9! IIRC, VPC 5 prints to only two emulated printers via VPC Additions--a PostScript printer and a single model parallel printer (an Epson, IIRC). Contrary to the impression you have gave here, your printer has a parallel port in addition to the serial port. Your Mac does not have a DB9 female serial port. Macs had only DIN-8 serial ports, which required an adapter to connect to DB9 or DB25 serial ports. You can make one yourself, or buy a Mac modem cable. You would do better to get a serial-to-parallel adapter such as the one supplied with Strydent's PowerPrint. They are no longer sold by Strydent, but perhaps you can find one elsewhere. Having done this, you need a driver for the printer. Strydent did not support the DesignJet 430.