Help please on physical setup between 6040 and PC

[Clive S]

My question is this - both my pc (main board) and cnc machine are 25pin female connections, do I simply buy a 25pin male to male cable? or would I need a different setup as I found a parallel port 6040 on ebay and the cable supplied was a male to female connector?

A picture would help. Is this 25 pin (D25) on the back of the PC as quite often there is a D25 that is a serial port and not parallel. Or is it on the mother board? ie headers

[magicniner]

If it's a serial port on the PC it will have visible pins (male), parallel ports on the PC have holes (female) ;-)

[Palletlad]

Success I have finally made my PC talk to my CNC machine, I have brought a male to male LPT 25pin cable and the response is smooth.
I will eventually invest in the USB converter devices that you mentioned but that's for another day when I have some spare cash.
I've done a Youtube video as well for you all to laugh at as not done a Youtube video in years, showing my inexperience on the topic. https://youtu.be/KoGgAq6H0Ww
now to buy mach3 and trial Vcarve.
cheers all for your help I will pick your brains on other subjects sooner probably than later.

[magicniner]

That's excellent to hear, I'm really pleased to hear you have it working!

- Nick

[magicniner]

"The Old Fashioned Printer Connector" is a Centronics connector, sadly I didn't have to look that up ;-)
Centronics connectors were also used for SCSI I connections and lots of other interesting stuff.
The other connector you wanted is a DB 25 Pin D-Sub connector.