MIKE ROSS wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 MR> "Roy J. Tellason" bravely wrote to "MIKE ROSS"
(29 Sep 04 
 MR> 20:06:51)  --- on the heady topic of "8-bit LPT cable"

 RJT> MIKE ROSS wrote in a message to Terry Vernon:

 RJT> I think you are mistaken here.

 MR> Many people noticed that all which was required to make the port
 MR> bidirectional was to wire this pin 1 to a spare bit in the control
 MR> port to make the direction bit available in software, via its hex
 MR> latch (74LS244) spare pin 15.

 RJT> The '244 is not a hex latch: "Octal Buffer/Line Driver/Line Receiver
 RJT> with Non-Inverting 3-state Output" -- there's no latching in there.

 MR> I must have been completely out to lunch when I wrote those numbers
 MR> down. Actually, it was accidental, I took this down from a mod faq
 MR> where the author himself had confused both parts in the discussion
 MR> and I wrote down the numbers he had in that context. Man, I should
 MR> have double checked this stuff!

 MR> Indeed the original IBM part was a 174 hex latch, the 244 is indeed
 MR> the octal driver/receiver and the 373 the latch. WOW! I've never
 MR> been this WRONG in a million years! Thanks for reading the reply,
 MR> Roy!!! And here I was thinking nobody read this stuff...
 MR> My sincerest appologies to all concerned!

Yeah,  well,  I guess I spend way too much time looking at TTL data books
and such,  anyhow...   :-)

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