Does anyone have any idea for this?

I have a star receipt printer with a parallel interface and no linux drivers. So I am printing to it using lp and just sending raw text to the device itself. The command in question, which works just fine, is:

lp -d star temprint.txt

In the same way, I send the hex characters to make it cut the receipt and also to open the cash drawer.

I say it works fine, it has one slight issue which we can live with, that being that if the printer goes offline, all the print requests queue up and print out in a batch when it comes back. However this being an industrial strength receipt printer, its something we can live with, it hardly ever happens. Leaving that aside....

I set up the printer in CUPS with the name of star, and addressed as

parallel:/dev/lp0

Now comes the problem. Parellel interfaces having gone the way of the dodo, the new computer I'm seeking to use only has a usb port. So I got a usb to parallel converter cable. I have played with this by stopping cups, then editing the /etc/cups/printers.conf file.

I can't get it to work. Supposedly from the gentoo wiki, which is usually very helpful, you should address it as

parallel:/dev/usb/lp0

On the grounds that linux still thinks its dealing with a parallel port. Makes no sense to me, but I tried it, and no luck. The cable itself is recognised and visible if you do lsusb.

Also, I know it works fine as cable because I can connect another printer with a parallel port for which I do have drivers, and successfully print a test page on it over that cable.

I must be doing something obvious wrong, but what? How do you address the usb port directly and just send it a stream of text, as in my present setup? Is there a way?

Peter