CENTRONICS

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CENTRONICS

• By Alexandra Peskett

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The History of Centronics

• Centronics started out as a division of Wang
  Laboratories.
• It was known mainly for its printers.
• In 1971, the division became its own company
  called Centronics Corporation.

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The History of Centronics

• Centronics Model 101 used a print head with a
  seven-wire solenoid impact system.
• This led Centronics to later claim that it had
  created the first dot-matrix printer.

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The History of Centronics

• Nowadays, Centronics is known for its parallel
  interface and not its printers.

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Centronics

• The Centronics interface is a standard interface
  for connecting printers and other parallel
  devices to a computer.
• Although Centronics Corporation designed the
  original standard, the interface used my modern
  computers was designed by Epson Corporation.

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Centronics Interface
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36-Pin Centronics Printer Connectors
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Contd
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Centronics

• When the Centronics parallel interface was first
  developed, the main peripheral was the printer.
• Now other devices have adopted the parallel
  interface.
• Portable disk drives
• Tape back-up drives
• CD-ROM players

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Centronics

• The interface generally has
• A cable
• 36-pin male and female connectors at the printer
  or other device
• Plugs into a 25-pin parallel port at the computer

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Centronics Hand Shaking
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Centronics
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Centronics Fate

• In 1987, Centronics was bought out by Genicom
• However, the parallel interface retained the name
  of Centronics
• It is still known as the Centronics parallel
  interface today.