How to connect a parallel printer to a USB port?

Hey there,
I've got this old IBM Power Systems printer I'm trying to hook up to my laptop running Windows 8. Since the printer uses an old-school 25-pin parallel port, I went ahead and picked up a USB adapter to make it work. Everything seems fine on the surface—I plug it in, install the drivers, and Device Manager shows the printer is recognized and working perfectly. But here's the kicker: whenever I try to run a test page, nothing happens. It’s just total silence, like there's no actual communication happening between the computer and the machine at all. Has anyone run into this before? I'd love to hear any suggestions or advice you might have. Thanks!

Which specific adapter are we talking about? Maybe you could drop a model number or a link to it here.

http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_i...seq=1&format=2

If you check out the link above, you'll see that besides just grabbing the cable, you also have to hunt down drivers for your OS. And let's be real, installing this kind of gear is rarely plug-and-play; you usually have to follow some specific sequence of steps, which you can find under the Knowledge Base Q&A section there.

It doesn't matter if your specific adapter or cable isn't the exact one in that link—I only posted it as an example. Just go to your own manufacturer's site to find the right specs and drivers for what you actually have.

The adapter looks almost identical to the one in this photo, though I can't be 100% certain about the exact model since I picked it up quite a while ago... It might be worth considering that I'm running Windows 8/10 64-bit, whereas the specs above don't seem to mention support for it. It’s a bit confusing because the system actually recognizes the drivers and everything, yet nothing prints. I'm starting to think it might just be a simple setting within the printer configuration itself...

It’s probably just a case of bad drivers. Honestly, when you start messing around with those kinds of chemical workarounds using an adapter, things tend to get pretty messy.