IEEE 1284

IEEE 1284, also known as the Centronics port, is a standard that defines bi-directional parallel communications between computers and other devices.

In the 1970s, Centronics developed the now-familiar printer parallel port that soon became a de facto standard.

Centronics had introduced the first successful low-cost seven-wire print head[citation needed], which used a series of solenoids to pull the individual metal pins to strike a ribbon and the paper.

A dot matrix print head consists of a series of metal pins arranged in a vertical row.

The original port design was send-only, allowing data to be sent from the host computer to the printer.

Since the new standard allowed the peripheral to send large amounts of data back to the host, devices that had previously used SCSI interfaces could be produced at a much lower cost.

No longer was the consumer required to purchase an expensive SCSI card—they could simply use their built-in parallel interface.