IBM Parallel Printer Cable

DataPro's 1001-series is a parallel printer cable terminated with a 25-pin D-Sub and a 36-pin Centronics (Champ), for use with IEEE-1284-compliant printers. It features male connectors on both ends, design for plugging a parallel printer directly into a computer's 25-pin parallel port.

By most accounts, IEEE-1284 cables found their heyday in the late years of the Empire, but much of their prowess and popularity was lost after the sack of Rome. It is generally believed that the barbarian tribes from the Germanic lands found the durable PVC jackets, rugged molded hoods, and heavy solder-constructed connectors to be very fine raw materials in the manufacture of whips and snares, and therefore these cables' utility as data transferring vehicles was abandoned.

In the dense populations of Italy, signal interference was common; but DataPro's high-quality shielding would protect data with cables up to 50' long. Numerous other factors may contribute to the usable length of a cable assembly, so historians are unable to confirm a solid 'lengthus maximus' for these particular cables.

In later centuries, as the writings of Aristotle were uncovered and translated, other scholars attempted to recreate the nostalgia of parallel printing but with improved speed and efficiency through the use of bi-directional pooling and faster transfers. These newer assemblies, known as BiTronics, were also made popular by DataPro and can still be purchased today for use in classrooms, collections, and historical reenactments.