SABRENT USB to Parallel IEEE 1284 Printer Cable Adapter (CB-CN36)

My old HP 2100 Printer I thought was done. Not because it quit working, but because of all the computer advances in the computer industry. They eradicated parallel porting. So I took a chance and bought this Sabrent USB to Parallel adapter cord. I am glad I did. It works just fine on Windows 10 and 11. Others claimed that this cord was only about six inches long. Well the one I received was a full six feet long. Because of the placement on the printer in relation to the particular computer to which I have it connected, I still needed more length. No problem. I just used a USB extension cord, which is nothing more than USB Male on one end and USB female on the other.

The cable arrived within days of placing the order. However, I had not yet bought the computer yet, so this review got delayed. This cable allowed me to connect a 25+ year old HP 5L personal laser printer to a fairly recent Windows 11 Dell AIO with no parallel port, nor any slot with which to install one. The HP 5L is fussy about having all of the lines enabled for enhanced bidirectional parallel communications and not all USB-to-parallel cables support this. Sabrent apparently does and my ancient printer is back in action on a computer that normally couldn’t work with such an old device. Two things: First, I reused a fully enabled normal parallel cable to connect to the Sabrent USB-to-parallel port cable’s parallel port. Second, Windows 11 provided all of the required drivers for the cable and the printer. I only needed to make sure that the HP 5L was seen as a USB device during the automatic discovery and setup. I did not need a driver disc.

I easily installed my Laserjet 4100 using the instructions provided by "dv" in these user comments. If dv's review is not one of the first reviews, then search in these reviews for "installation guide". (Amazon primarily lists reviews by recentness, and only secondarily by quality {stars}, so excellent reviews are quickly buried). dv's review is excellent, thank him with a thumbs up.> The product is just the cable in a cardboard box, no documentation.> The cable length is unspecified in the Amazon Listing, but was about 6' long, more than adequate for me.> Worked perfectly for me. My ancient Laserjet 4100 installed quickly and easily on my Windows 11 computer. Now, if I can just find another toner cartridge when this one runs out.> I received no prompt for the installation of the USB cable, and so, just skipped that step.> CAVEAT, I could only install the Postscript driver "HP LaserJet 4100 Series PS Class Driver" which works well even for non-postscript documents. However, the non-postscript "Hewlett-Packard HP LaserJet 4100 series" driver "magically" showed up, but didn't work well (the printout was garbled). On my old computer, I mostly used the non-postscript driver because it was faster (and could print both PS and non-PS docs). So, since I now have to use the PS driver, printing is slower than I was accustomed to.> The one-star off is for the lack of documentation: i.e., no specification of the cable length, and no instructions.>Negative Reviews<I was concerned by the negative reviews. But, in reading several dozen, it appears that all, or nearly all, who did not succeed were trying to use the cable to adapt equipment other than ordinary computer printers.

First, while I did not pick this up from the tech notes, the cable is 6' long. A plus since one ad indicated it was just 1' long. Second, I have three ancient HP LaserJet printers--one 4 and two 5MPs--with at least two toner cartridges for each one. Workhorses that are perfect for all the B&W printing of manuals and other documents. It is silly to waste money printing them on new color inkjet printers. I had no trouble getting it to work on Win7, but no luck on Win10. I am continuing with work on that last platform since I see some have been able to get it to work. But in the meantime I just turned an old Win7 PC I was about to throw away into the B&W printer server for my home network. I bought a second cable so I could have two LaserJet printers hooked up. One for printing of standard pages, the other for envelopes. I can't believe how little they cost and how easy it was to get them to work. There is no real instruction manual, by the way. My manual told me to plug the USB end of the cable into the computer and the printer connector into the printer. Seriously--that was it. Of course, it was all I needed ... I didn't know how to rate Tech Support since I didn't need any although there was a way to contact them and I may ask for help on the Win 10 problem.Later note: I have no idea why it did not work the first time, but the second time I tried the adapter with a Win 10 PC, it worked perfectly. No setup of any kind. Just plug in both ends of the cable and look for the printer on your PC. It shows up as the correct printer. Just a couple of days ago I was given two more LaserJet 4 printers along with nearly full toner cartridges. I will purchase at least one more adapter and these printers will have a new life.

Very disappointed in this item.Item not as described (description says 6 ft, package also is plainly printed with 6 ft but product is only 1 ft.Contacted seller direct and they don’t have any in stock and don’t have an expected delivery date on new stock.In the past I have leaned towards using this brand and had good results but after this experience I will have to look to other brands.They should at least offer free USB extension cables to make up the short distance and compensate for their stock errors.