IEEE Standard Signaling Method for a Bidiretional Parallel Peripheral Interface for Personal Computers.

• IEEE 1284-1994
• IEEE 1284R
• IEEE 1284-2000

• IEEE Standard 1284.1 (TIP/SI) Standard for Information Technology for Transport Independent Printer/Scanner Interface.
• IEEE Standard 1284.3 Standard for Interface and Protocol Extensions to IEEE Std. 1284 Compliant Peripheral and Host Adapter Ports.
• IEEE Standard 1284.4 Standard for Data Delivery and Logical Channels for IEEE Std. 1284 Interfaces.

The standard documentation is available from the IEEE.org website.

The IEEE 1284 Device ID is used to identify the connected printer and its capabilities. Some printers also provide status information via the ID string.

It consists of a sequence of bytes. The first two bytes are the length of the sequence, including the two length bytes. The first byte is the most significant byte. Following the two length bytes, the sequence is composed of a series of keys and values of the form: key: value {,value}; repeated for each key. As indicated, each key will have one value, and may have more than one value.

The minimum necessary keys (case-sensitive) are MANUFACTURER, COMMAND SET, and MODEL. (These keys may be abbreviated as MFG, CMD, and MDL respectively.)
Each implementation will supply these three keys and possibly additional ones as well. Each key (and each value) is a string of characters. Any characters except colon (:), comma (,), and semi-colon (;) may be included as part of the key (or value) string. Any leading or trailing white space (SPACE[x’20’], TAB[x’09’], VTAB[x’0B’], CR[x’0D’], NL[x’0A’], or FF[x’0C’]) in the string is ignored by the parsing program (but is still counted as part of the overall length of the sequence).

All MANUFACTURER, and MODEL key values must remain unique from each manufacturer.

MANUFACTURER:ACME Manufacturing;
COMMAND SET:PCL,MPL;
MODEL:LaserBeam ?;
COMMENT:Anything you like;
ACTIVE COMMAND SET:PCL;