Parallel port protection

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davebee

Joined Oct 22, 2008
540
Yeah, I burned out a pin of my laptop parallel port by being too careless with it.

Do you have software in mind? An OS, a GUI builder like Delphi or Visual Basic? Newer OSes like Windows 2K, XP and up protect the hardware ports from the user so besides a user interface program, you need to bypass the Windows port protection with a utility like "inpout32.dll" or "porttalk".

Or if anyone knows of a more modern way for a user interface to access the parallel port I'd also be interested in learning about it because I use parallel port access quite a lot with these old utilities.

David
 

beenthere

Joined Apr 20, 2004
15,819
I've moved your post into its own thread, where it will draw more responses. This is the thread you responded to:http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/showthread.php?t=15433.

Please refrain from "hijacking" existing threads with tangent or off-topic questions. You can create new threads for new questions using the "New Thread" button on the upper left of the page.

Apparently, the more modern way is to use USB. Most modern computers don't have a parallel port on them.

In any case, the PP should only interface with an external I/F circuit, and do the control functions very indirectly. Dealing with the port is easier with either inline assembler or one of the languages that allows hardware access.
 
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Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
Never heard of it, but I wonder if there is a PMCIA version of a parallel interface. It's got to be cheaper than the laptop. My suggestion is to use an old desktop with the extra printer port PCI card to test this stuff out before using something expensive and hard to replace.
 
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