http://neil.franklin.ch/Projects/Parport/Extension_Cable
author Neil Franklin, last modification 2005.07.04


commercial cables are made for putting printers far away, at least 3m
  I just need cable to bring port from back of system to front, about 1m
    in the end I made 2 segments 1/3m and 2/3m, combinable for 1m


material just 2 plugs (DB25m and DB25f) and 25wire cable

wires in my cable came arranged in 3 rings, colours (standard?) are:
  outer 15 white, brown, green, yellow, gray, pink, blue, red, black, violet,
    gray/pink, red/blue, white/green, brown/green, white/yellow
  middle 7 white/gray, yellow/brown, brown/blue, white/blue
    pink/brown, white/pink, gray/brown
  inner 3 brown/red, white/black, white/red


wiring is simply straigt through pin 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, .., 25-25
  so just match wire isolation colours to pins
  first wire one plug (such as the DB25m) as above
    then insert the other plug into it, and wire fitting colours
    any wiring errors of first will be copied and so automatically corrected
  to make cable end tidy, and more pull resistant, spread wires evenly


DB25m from wiring side, DB25f is mirror image:

        black 1
                14 violet
          red 2
                15 gray/pink
         blue 3                   outer ring
                16 red/blue
         pink 4
                17 white/green
             -----
   white/blue 5
                18 pink/brown     middle ring
   brown/blue 6
             -----
                19 white/black
    brown/red 7                   inner ring
                20 white/red
             -----
 yellow/brown 8
                21 white/pink     middle ring
   white/gray 9
                22 gray/brown
             -----
        gray 10
                23 brown/green
      yellow 11
                24 white/yellow   outer ring
       green 12
                25 white
       brown 13