March 2000
Intermediate to advanced
632 pages
18h 6m
English
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17
Enhanced Parallel Port
17.1 Introduction
The Centronics parallel port only allows data to be sent from the host to a peripheral. To overcome this the IEEE published the 1284 standard, entitled ‘Standard Signaling Method for a Bidirectional Parallel Peripheral Interface for Personal Computers’. It allows for bidirectional communication and high communication speeds, while being backwardly compatible with existing parallel ports.
The IEEE-1284 standard defines the following modes:
• Compatibility mode (forward direction only) – This mode defines the transfer of data between the PC and the printer (Centronics mode, as covered in the previous chapter).
• Nibble mode (reverse direction) – This mode defines how four bits are transferred, at a time, using ...