Personal Iris 4D/25 Parallel Port Pinout

[Jack P. Weldon]

In article <26428 at boulder.Colorado.EDU> rainer at hibachi.colorado.edu (Rainer Malzbender) writes:
>
>Is the parallel port on a 4D/25 just like a PC parallel port ? If the
>pinout is in the manuals, SGI did a good job of hiding it. I want to
>hook up a Laserjet II to it. Thanks for any help.
>
My PI manual (Version 1.0) has an Appendix A that gives the specs of the
cable required for the parallel port. It says: 

Centronics 25-line interface with full shield attached 360 to solid metal
D-shell; IBM PC compatible. The 740-0 from Inmac is a good example -- it is
an 8' Double-Shielded cable. 

An aside: don't forget that the IRIS 9-pin serial port is *NOT* a PC-AT
9-pin. The pinouts for the serial port are in the same appendix as well.

Flame: We will never really know WHY IBM decided to put Signal Ground on
Pin 5 (and other strange twists) when they designed their "non-rs232 
standard nine-pin", now an unfortunate "industry standard". Now every PC
clone maker must also use the same pinout...Standards are funny that way.


--
Cheers, 
			        	
Jack P. Weldon
(jweldon at csd.sgi.com)