I did not depend on the ribbon cable for the length, mine is attached to a parallel port extender cable that I already had laying around.

That's where I gave up. My creation worked fine *until* I tried extendding it with a straight-through DB-25 cable....and that config would work on my work laptop, but not on the parallel port on my home PC. So, after about 2 hours down the drain, the answer? Money!

(News flash! I have a lead on a 15-1994! Details to follow!)