mips or arm printer server

[Pasha]

Hello all, Our family has an older laser printer which works quite well, but only interfaces through parallel port. The only computer in our house which has a parallel port is running windows, and so our mac has some annoyances connecting to it. When we ran linux on that computer it worked smooth as butter.
I was toying with the idea of building a single board computer out of an arm or mips(or any thing else, for that matter, that could run cups), run linux on it, and set up the cups server for our macs, and my linux laptop, as well as have it run samba for the pc.
My question is does anyone know what the best processor for this would be, (small fanless, minimal), and where to get a kit, or ready made board to have the processor, enough ram, flash memory(maybe sdcard), lan(for connection with other computers, Lpt, and USB(for other printers or scanners in the future) any thoughts ideas, or criticisms would be welcome. I have a good deal of experience with Linux, and am not scared away by daunting projects.

[fguy64]

hmm building a computer then installing cups and Samba, in order to be able to use an old laser. If you want to go to all that effort, then go for it, I can't advise you on a processor.

However, consider that it might be a lot less effort to use some kind of lpr/lpd printing. You might even be able to just use the windows/ parallel port machine as is if you wanted, without the MAC-Windows connection problems you speak of.

[coopstah13]

be a lot cheaper and easier to buy a parallel to usb converter, they also have cables which on one end is parallel, other end is USB, for this purpose

[Pasha]

Thank you for the information. I know there are other ways to do this, but I have always wanted to build a small micro controller based computer, so, I still want to do it anyway. If anyone could help me still, the information i want to know most is where to find a place that could get me the base system with processor and memory and the ability to have ethernet, and other things attached, like a development board, or someting like that. Maybe the cheapest option would be an all in one type board, but if i could actually assemble it it would be cool. Since I live overseas, I don't think I will try having my own board made, or trying to get the equipment for surface mount soldering. that is still a little beyond me. thanks in advance for the info.

[coopstah13]

www.openrd.org
PlugComputer Community

I don't think you will find anything with a parallel port either way though. Parallel ports are gigantic, and small computers are too small to contain them anymore, especially since the list of devices using them is so tiny.

[Pasha]

couldn't I just program a pic microcontroller to do the serial to parralell necessary? it would seem that shouldn't be all that hard, just need 25 io lines right?