extended capability port (1284) (ECP)

The Extended Capabilities Port (ECP) is also known as the Enhanced Communications Port (ECP) or Enhanced Capabilities Port (ECP).

An ECP port is an 8-bit wide parallel interface defined under IEEE 1284 that supports bidirectional data transfer between personalcomputers and peripheral devices. It is similar to the Enhanced Parallel Port( EPP) on which it is based, has data compression with Run Length Encoding( RLE) and command cycles.

Automatic data transfer is performed via the parallel port standard using Direct Memory Access( DMA) and interrupt control. In practice, transfer rates are 700 kB/s and range up to 2.1 MB/s. Up to 128 peripheral devices can be addressed via the ECP port. It is used especially in connection with printers and scanners