PNC 1050 hook up?

[Bunky67]

I bought a pnc 1050 and want to use it with my dell laptop. Windows 8 and coreldraw x5, I bought a USB to parrellel cable. And down loaded the drivers from Roland site.

But I can't seem to get the laptop to find my cutter do I need a different cable? Or Driver?
Or a null modem cable ?
The precious owner ran the cutter of a parrallel cable instead of a serial is one better then the other?

 

[OldPaint]

iam thinking your computer is to advanced to run a 1995 plotter. how hard would it be for you to find an older computer with WIN 98, XP any version of corel draw, with a parallel port............JUST TO DO CUTTING? you other option is go out and buy a ROLAND CX-300($4000)AND IT WILL RUN ON YOUR EXISTING COMPUTER.

 

[Mosh]

You need a USB to serial connection, the parrellel don't work so well. I run a couple older Roland PNC 1100 plotters on desktop with win 8 with no problems. In fact I have the serial cards into the computers so....might be cheaper to buy a new plotter...

 

[round man]

windows has two types of parallel port drivers that it loads one is an eep type and the other is the ecp type the old rolands use the earlier ecp version that newer versions of windows do not load by default,...you must set the mode to the ecp type port needed. it is usually much simpler to run the plotter off of a serial port from dedicated cutting software ,...if you intend to use the windows printer driver then yes you want to use the parallel port. windows will not find the plotter like it will newer printers (the old rolands are pre plug and play hardware)you will have to manually load a driver first.

edited to add
like old paint said you are trying to run a 17+ year old machine off of new software,...that equates to centuries in computer software and hardware time,... the cheapest and simplest method will be to get a good win xp desktop used and do the cutting from there,...cutting vinyl will be the same speed on the old xp desktop as on a new i7 machine as both units will be restricted to the 9600 baud transmission rate of the old plotter's communication parameters