pedroho

It has been a very long time for me to do some photo printing when I tried to set up the 2 Olympus Camedia dye-sub printers, I noticed that the driver is for Window 3.1, window 95 and the Mac, and the cable is for Parallel ports which are not available on the current PC.

Time flies and has left me way behind, any suggestion to make this work?

What a pity that the printers are brand new and I have fair bits of material in stock too.

TIA

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Parallel Printer Port, you mean Jurassic Port! And i80386 & i80486 CPUs, likely Pentium [1] at best. Can't imagine any of it working with a modern i3, i5, i7, i9 / Windows XP, VISTA, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 any computer. Time for the recycle bin. Try a new Canon or Epson Photo Quality Printer.

Stardust Loc: Central Illinois

You can get a parallel-to-USB converter short cable, like on Amazon, for under $10. I would think drivers will still work as long as they are loaded into current Windows. They are printer specific.

survivaldealer Loc: NE Utah

The printer will still work. You have to get an adapter from USB to DB25 (parallel). Of course, even when it does work it will be decades behind the fine quality printing of today.

PHRubin Loc: Nashville TN USA

There are USB to parallel port adapters you could use. However, make sure there is a driver for you printer on your OS. Also, you could call the printer manufacturer.

pedroho

Thanks for all the great advise.
Here I come, Amazon.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Yes!
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=parallel+to+usb+adapter&i=electronics&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

However, you may not be able to get Win10 drivers. Canon does not have a Win10 driver for their big 9000 printer.

EDIT: Olympus doesn't seem to offer support for - or even mention - printers.
https://learnandsupport.getolympus.com/support

LenCreate

Sometimes, when I couldn’t find a driver on a manufacturer’s US website, I’ve found them on foreign sites with a Google search and they’ve worked in Windows 10 with a parallel to USB adapter.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Correct, I had been using a PRO 9000 with my Windows 10 PC by using a Win 7 driver, but with limited functionality. It finally died a couple months back and so now I am using the Canon PIXMA PRO-100 Printer I also had. This has full capabilities plus WiFi.

lehighjack Loc: somewhere in FL

I have no solution, but I loved the dye sub quality of my old Olympus printer. When media began to get scarce and fiddling with the odd ball size became a hassle, I used up my media and gave the printer to community services. The Canon Pro 100 does well by me. BTW, you might do an ebay or Google search for either drivers or emulation mode software. I recall having to use the emulation mode of Win 7 with my Olympus.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Unless you can find a CUPS printer driver for the Mac, I don't know of anything that will work with that old stuff. Even then, I wouldn't bother. Results will be disappointing in comparison to modern inkjet printers.

I would suggest you take all that dye sub gear to a recycler and buy a decent inkjet *photo* printer. The Canon Pro 100 dye ink printer or Canon Pro 10 pigment ink printer, or any of the Epson Claria ink Stylus Photo, or P-Series Ultrachrome printers would fit the bill. You would have your choice of dozens of paper stocks, plus better print longevity and (if you play the color management game with discipline) better color.

The computer industry and photo printer industries turn everything over in three to five years. No one uses Win 3.1, 95, or Mac OS 9 and earlier these days. Parallel ports have been out of the mainstream market for 20 years. So unless you can find an antique computer and peripheral cables... and consumables... It's a waste of time.

Perhaps a simpler alternative would be to upload your images to a decent professional color lab (there are dozens). If you do that, and expect accurate color, you should calibrate your monitor with a hardware and software kit from X-Rite or DataColor. Those companies' web sites have plenty of information that explains color management. Decent labs should also be able to work with you to help you get high quality results.

BebuLamar

Actually you can run Windows 3.1. No problem I do that often.

rcarol

If you can't get your drivers to work under Windows 10 you can install a Virtual Machine which will allow you to install Windows 95 under the Virtual Machiine. Then you can load your drivers onto Windows 95 and run as normal. There are many Youtube videos on installing a VM under Windows 10. I had to do this to get a scanner to work on my newly built computer.

Fredrick Loc: Former NYC, now San Francisco Bay Area

WOW. If memory serves me right Windows 3.1 came out in 1993! 26 years ago!!

In technology terms there’s a whole new world out there. Treat yourself to a new printer.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

Parallel-to-USB adapters were always a risk. Sometimes, with some equipment, they worked. Often they didn't.