While I haven't run into this situation myself, I tend to agree with the responses these two members have already left:



And, if the USB <==> serial adapters I've played with are any indication of what you can expect with these, you might be in for some unpleasant surprises about the stability of the device driver that comes with it.

So, don't try to hack together what could be readily accomplished with a single commercial off-the-shelf product: just get yourself a USB device programmer.

As an alternative though, your laptop might very well contain traditional hardware parallel port functionality, minus the physical connector. If that is the case, the connector would probably be available on a port replicator/docking station offered by the laptop's manufacturer. Such port replicators/docking stations typically attach to the laptop via a proprietary connector that provides access to internal busses on the laptop's system board.

I saw a product in a catalog some weeks ago made by a third party manufacturer called a "port replicator" for use with any laptop. That strikes me as a remarkable misnomer. Since it was really nothing more than a USB-attached collection of I/O devices, there's no reason to believe it would work any better than the USB <==> parallel cable you described.

--Sasha Jevtic