Printer ports for the modern PC - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 03:01:24 am
content: A few of you may be aware I purchase a new PC and of course it has no printer port. I have several devices that require a printer port and spent the day attempting to get one to work on a PCIe bus. There is one board in particular that I had thought may do the trick. It uses a MOSChip MCS9900CV controller. They have some DOS software to remap the port to the standard ports addresses. They even show you how to make up a loop back test cable to test the board (under DOS). The board supports all the basic modes and you can select them from the DOS tools! It's great.Windows 10 finds the board with no problems and they have drivers for it. I then tries Rufus but ended up going back to the tried and true HP USB format program and made up a windows 95 boot disk with all the commands installed. I then added all the software for the card. Sure enough, I run their program and it finds the board and maps the port. I go into debug (remember debug) and display the data at 0x40. Sure enough, there's the 0x378 at the first printer port address! It looked too good to be true. So I tried to write to the port and nothing.... After several hours and many attempts, I went back to try the board in Windows 10. I just set it up as a generic printer and tried to print to it. Nada.... Maybe a bad board.I had tried some of the other boards with DOSBox and VirtualBox but it does not appear they support simulating the printer ports.What's been your experience with printer ports with the new PCs?

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 03:32:43 am
content: Does your new PC not have a LPT1 header on the MB?You probably need one of these:https://www.amazon.com/Motherboard-Parallel-Printer-bracket-socket/dp/B00PI5XF4U

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 03:43:43 am
content: If you only want to print you could try a USB=>parallel converter cable. However, this will only support normal print functions and will not support bi-directional data comms.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 03:47:55 am
content: Another option is to get an older computer with a real parallel port, put Linux and Samba on it, and share it as a network printer.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 04:38:22 am
content: Good idea but there is no header or BIOS support for a printer port. Funny, I didn't even think about it not having one.I have a PC that runs all the hardware just fine now. This PC was going to replace it. To be clear, I never used the printer port on the old PC to print. I switched to Ethernet a long time ago for that. I need the port for various software keys and various programming devices.I took a break to eat, then decided to swap the slot. No change. So I tried selecting the Gen 1 PCIe and still no change. But then I tried running the diagnostics before doing anything else and it passes! This is a program called stndosin.exeI then tried it with just the -a switch to enable the port. This passes the loopback test as well! The port in this case is assigned address 0xB010. I go into debug and "d 40:0", sure enough 10 B0. So I hook up some LEDs and try and "o bo10 ff" and bingo, the LEDs turn off!Next I try their remap -r switch to get the port sitting at the legacy address. I rerun the loopback test and it failsGo back into debug, see the port sitting at new address but again can no longer control it. So it appears there is a bug in their product. I downloaded the latest software from their site and no difference.So close......http://www.asix.com.tw/products.php?op=pItemdetail&PItemID=119;74;110

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 05:12:26 am
content: OK LAN then.Years ago when we'd not long got the 'net via dialup we wanted to share it around the house to the kids PC's, I did it with something like this from the office PC that was the 'net point of entry:https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Express-Gigabit-Ethernet-ST1000SPEX42/dp/B00AWP9MGGWhether you can change the addresses of this card I wouldn't know but with most LAN connected devices you can.Bit dear I know, just a thought.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 05:25:30 am
content: That's nice and all but it's not a standard Centronics parallel printer port.I use Ethernet for printing and printer ports for anything but printing.Too bad VirtualBox or DosBox won't emulate it.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 05:45:42 am
content: Quote from: joeqsmith on September 02, 2016, 05:25:30 amThanks Joe but why do we only now find out what type of port you need?

author: SL4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 08:07:42 am
content: Sorry - it's starting to sound like you need to update those 15 year old tools for today's projects!- Sure - keep the old clunker (286/386?) to sustain your old interests, but it really is time to move forward on some of of those parallel gadgets for modern development!!Good luck - it's an interesting challenge!

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 11:36:58 am
content: Quote from: joeqsmith on September 02, 2016, 03:01:24 amSo bad that I discarded anything that uses a printer port. Supposedly the trick is to find a PCI/PCIe parallel port card which is a true 'old style' printer port but none of the cards you can buy seems to be able to do that. They only seem to work for printers and not bidirectional communication. Then again, abusing printer ports for things like scanners, programmers, etc has always been a hit & miss.edit: typo

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 11:48:16 am
content: Quote from: joeqsmith on September 02, 2016, 03:01:24 amWhat devices?

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 12:24:09 pm
content: The reason that, in the past, the (ISA!) parallel printerport was popular under hobbyists, was that, at least with DOS,the port presented some GPIO style interface which could be used directly by your program. It gave you eight output pinsand four input pins. For example, with Turbo C you could write something like outb(0x378, 0x05) which would set theeight output data pins to 00000101. Output was TTL level so it was easy to control some external hardware.Later, microsoft decided that there should be no place anymore for parallel printer ports, which was a pitty for manyelectronic enthousiasts.

author: ovnr
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 12:37:53 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on September 02, 2016, 12:24:09 pmWhile I'm all for complaining about MS, this really wasn't them. Practically no-one uses parallel ports anymore, and their inclusion costs money and space.If all you need is to toggle some pins, there are a lot of easy solutions. Sure, some old software no longer works, but that's generally referring to software from 20 years ago.

author: Fred27
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 12:47:04 pm
content: Parallel ports still get used for some CNC stuff, so I was after a reasonably new PC with one recently. Dell is your best bet. Some of their current PCs (or reasonably recent ones anyway) have a real parallel port.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 12:55:45 pm
content: Quote from: ovnr on September 02, 2016, 12:37:53 pmIf you are lucky, there could be a serial port with which you can toggle the RTS and DTR pins but they are not TTL compatibel.And even serial ports are rare those days.So, which pins found on a standard modern pc can be toggled?

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 12:58:22 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on September 02, 2016, 12:24:09 pmso the missing parallel port on the back of intel board was due to microsoft's decision? that the hardware company intel had to comply to that software/OS company? this is new!

author: RGB255_0_0
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 01:01:32 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on September 02, 2016, 12:58:22 pmDidn't you get the internal memo from Microsoft? Apple is removing the 2.5mm audio jack because of Microsoft! Apple also removed type A connectors on their 2015 MacBook because of Microsoft too! Microsoft is killing the industry, didn't you know?

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 01:47:06 pm
content: internal memo? i smell conspiracy theory bullsheet.

author: Muxr
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 02:00:05 pm
content: All jokes aside, Microsoft does have a lot of pull with hardware manufacturers. New CPUs for instance Intel's Kaby Lake and AMD's Zen won't support prior Windows versions than 10. They will probably work with older versions but there won't be official support for them:http://www.pcworld.com/article/3112663/software/microsoft-made-em-do-it-the-latest-kaby-lake-zen-chips-will-support-only-windows-10.html

author: Jeff_Birt
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 02:06:22 pm
content: [quote author=Karel link=topic=73564.msg1017319#msg1017319 date=1472819049Later, microsoft decided that there should be no place anymore for parallel printer ports, which was a pitty for many electronic enthousiasts.What a load of bunk! Microsoft has support the parallel port since DOS was in diapers. Many modern motherboards will have a header for a parallel port and if it does not there are many add-on cards available. Almost no commercially available piece of equipment uses the LPT these days so PC makers don't waste the money putting them on new PCs. As far as Microsoft goes the only limitation is that with a 64bit Windows OS you cannot bit bang the parallel port.Ages ago (25 years) bit banging the parallel port was a good method for getting access to some digital I/O from a PC. Some of the early ISA parallel I/O cards were just some 8255s on a card, a.k.a. parallel port chips. While this non-standard use of the parallel port 'kind of' worked OK it was far, far from ideal.In the past 10-15 years the advent of USB and cheap/easy to use microcontrollers has done away with using the parallel port for control. You can easily use an Arduino, etc. to do anything you used to do with the LPT and you can do it easier and better. I work a lot with small CNC systems and the change over from LPT to external control has been fantastic. You can get a basic/simple board that looks like a parallel port to your little CNC machine and plugs in by USB to your PC for $100, for $200 you can get a board that has more I/O than 3 parallel ports and run 1,000X faster than the fastest parallel port driver.Technology has obsoleted the PC parallel port it has nothing to do with MS.

author: RGB255_0_0
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 02:12:10 pm
content: Quote from: Muxr on September 02, 2016, 02:00:05 pmMeh, the CPUs will work, of course, although you may struggle to install Chipset drivers.Anyway, Microsoft doesn't want Windows 7 turning into the next XP and having to support it for circa 20 years.Upgrade from those 3dfx Voodoos and 2D accelerators; it's not 1997 any more.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 04:26:35 pm
content: Quote from: tautech on September 02, 2016, 05:45:42 amQuote from: nctnico on September 02, 2016, 11:36:58 amThe card I am posted the link for supports SPP, EPP, ECP & PS2.Quote from: Fungus on September 02, 2016, 11:48:16 amA few devices I made for JTAG, BDM debugger for the CPU32 core, Lattice programmer, of course my generic programmer which supports the FPGA serial devices, then there are a few software keys.Quote from: ovnr on September 02, 2016, 12:37:53 pmI did many a project in the early days of PCs with the printer port. I tend to somewhat agree about MS ending it in that they started to produce a protected OS. I joined the MSDN when it was first offered. There was a good article in there about them hiring I think DECs main guy. He then laid out a plan for their new OS. I saw the light and went from DOS/Windows 3.1 to NT beta bypassing all that 95 98 crap. There was a good article in Dr Dobbs about how to bypass it and most of the companies started making little programs to change the exception tables to allow you to run their product.I am not a fan (at all) of USB but would say that was really what ended the printer port.Anyway, sounds like no one has come up with a good solution.This is what happens when you buy a Signal Hound spectrum analyzer. You open a can of worms.....

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 04:52:22 pm
content: It may be conflicting with a parallel port built into the chipset that isn't physically connected on your motherboard. If the remap utility gives you any alternatives, try a different legacy parallel address (0x278, 0x378, 0x3BC)

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 05:25:39 pm
content: Quote from: Jeff_Birt on September 02, 2016, 02:06:22 pmThis is curious. Long before Windows, back in the 80's, I used to use VMS on Digital (DEC) VAX hardware. VMS was secure, multi-user operating system with virtual memory, much like Windows. What you would do, if you wanted to directly control a hardware port, was to allocate it to yourself. This would put a lock on the device so you had exclusive use of it and other users of the system could not access it. Having done that you could then "open" the port and do with it whatever the device driver supported (including bit-banging, if the device driver had commands for that).It's interesting how technology seems to go backwards with the march of time.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 05:35:29 pm
content: Quote from: joeqsmith on September 02, 2016, 05:14:55 pmQuoteSadly I've never seen a system in the wild where the slots do not end up on their own bus.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 05:41:51 pm
content: I just tried using the other three serial port addresses as well. Same results.What is now different with the 64 bit MS OS's. NT was protected from the start. I never looked into it and just started writing my own drivers or using a generic driver, like Jungo. With LabVIEW (about the only way I will code under Windows today), they have their own generic driver. Once this is setup, you have pretty much direct access to the hardware.I believe the it was the head guy for DEC that worked on VMS who MS hired to write their first protected OS. If interested, I'll see if I can find the article.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 05:49:54 pm
content: I had the same problem recently my old pc died that I used with the lpt1 port for my old but very expensive device programmer. There I found out that MS XP was the last OS that supported user access to the lpt. Starting with MS Vista they locked it for security reasons, win 7 also does not support the direct access to the lpt1.So then there is also another problem, modern motherboards some who still have a lpt1 have modern chipsets and processor and SATA ports that XP needs drivers for. Since XP SP3 was released and stopped support 3 years ago, the latest cpu and chipsets are not supported.I finally found a nice laptop which could be inserted in a docking station with lpt1 port that worked, nowalthough I have a few legal XP pro keys from old pc's I could not get a legal version from MS since they took the download down.So resume: MS is to blame to stop support for the lpt1 and those who need it better buy three to four year old computers preferably with SATA ports to remain guarantee to use it for the coming years.I can buy my device programmer with an USB port but I hate spending $6000 for a device programmer only to switch lpt to usb functionality.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 06:21:17 pm
content: Quote from: joeqsmith on September 02, 2016, 06:18:45 pmOf course PCs can use it. Not every use of the parallel port requires direct access in this manner.You must remember you're attempting to replicate 1980s hardware and software..Does your new system have a PCI slot available? You may have better luck under DOS. For modern OSes, you will need a driver.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 06:33:45 pm
content: This intrigued me, I haven't used a parallel port for bit banging for some years, but many debuggers and programmers used to use it up until quite recently.I put an MSO LA onto a PC's mobo printer header I have here. It's running Windows 10 and is a 3GHz quad core Q9650.Having done that, I set up a DOS VM in VMWare and bit banged the parallel port. Seems to work a treat, but at only about 110kHz, and some expected jitter too of course.Quite how much it actually supports (ECP, EPP) etc is up for grabs, but this simple bit bang worked.And I enjoyed a few minutes of nostalgia to boot!

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 06:39:20 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on September 02, 2016, 06:21:17 pmYes it has one. The simulator plugs into it.This card is advertised as supporting DOS. I am not aware of any legacy DOS apps that would use ports above 0x400. Which explains the remap utility. It just does not work, at least on this PC.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 06:45:00 pm
content: Quote from: joeqsmith on September 02, 2016, 06:39:20 pmIt's been a while, but ISTR that was because the upper address lines weren't decoded in the original IBM PC, so the I/O space just repeated.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 06:45:16 pm
content: Quote from: Fred27 on September 02, 2016, 12:47:04 pmOr, you can use any of a number of USB controllers. Personally, I use the Ethernet version of SmoothStepper so all I need is a spare network port. Home network on one port, SmoothStepper on the other.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 06:52:16 pm
content: Regarding direct port access, that's been broken since NT, but was worked around for 95, 98, ME. NT+ run in protected mode so any user mode program will fail fatally.There was a DLL, portio.dll or something, that was doing the rounds for some time which consisted of a device driver too to allow port access, but you had to write your code to use it: no biggie, but you couldn't just take an x86 program with direct IN and OUT instructions, you had to use the simple API which talked to a device driver.Then x64 arrived, and driver signing, and you have yet more hoops to deal with.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 07:06:25 pm
content: Quote from: Howardlong on September 02, 2016, 06:52:16 pmhttp://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/inpout32/

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 07:24:29 pm
content: Quote from: joeqsmith on September 02, 2016, 06:18:45 pmI do not know. I remember as others above stated that there were drivers that would allow you to circumvent the lock out.Probably starting with Vista they really prevented it. If anyone knows a way to get around the Win7 lpt1 lockout, I could try the software to see if that runs. However since many tried I doubt it.Below is the statement of the device programmer company.Also if I remember correctly a lot of lpt pins were misused as inputs and extra outputs and that could also be a cause of the problem.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 07:49:25 pm
content: Quote from: Howardlong on September 02, 2016, 06:52:16 pmAgain, you could. Quick search of Dr Dobbs, found the article I mentioned. The internet it great!http://www.drdobbs.com/windows/direct-port-io-and-windows-nt/184409876?pgno=3

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2016, 08:43:15 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on September 02, 2016, 07:24:29 pmThere was (yet another) change to the NT driver model in Vista, so possibly some deprecation too, and perhaps the vendor didn't have the financial appetite (possibly quite reasonably) to extend compatibility?

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 03, 2016, 03:49:24 am
content: Quote from: joeqsmith on September 02, 2016, 03:01:24 amUsually not a drama. My current desktop is about 5 years old (so not new) but it still came with serial and parallel ports. I'm still running Windows 7 and never had a problem.My motherboard is a Supermicro and I've sworn by them since building my first Pentium III machine. They are absolutely rock solid but cost a little more. They aren't your normal everyday consumer motherboard, they are designed for high-end workstations, servers and embedded devices. However they still make current motherboards with a lot of legacy devices. If you shop around, you can still buy the Supermicro P4SCA motherboard new which comes with PCI and ISA slots. Almost all Supermicro boards still come with standard serial ports on-board and/or via pin header.For parallel ports, you could look at something like theX7DB8. It's not in their newest range of boards, but still fairly current.

author: DimitriP
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2016, 04:38:51 am
content: Supermicro

author: magetoo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2016, 06:22:16 am
content: Another (low power, low budget) semi-recent motherboard that has a parallel port (header; and two serial):https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AM1IA/Probably on the tail end of availability now, I don't think that CPU socket will see any new releases from AMD. Won't solve any Windows problems people might have, but thought I'd mention it in case someone was looking for hardware.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2016, 07:17:23 am
content: Quote from: Howardlong on September 02, 2016, 08:43:15 pmFrom the manufacturers POV it made sense going to USB, sell newer machines to businesses that can afford it. My problem is with MS that they also drop legacy support but worse that their so called backwards compability run mode (as admin you can run programs in backwards compability modes) is more a farce than a serious solution. Even a VM like virtual box can not solve this issue.So for hobbieists that have serious expensive legacy products like cnc routers, p&p machines etc. this could become a nightmare in the not so far future. Just hope that not all P4 machines etc. are discarded, since they are quite large and consumers cant use them anymore they are now moving to landfills in large numbers making it difficult for the future, also IDE devices vs SATA devices do not help.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2016, 07:45:26 am
content: However, I guess if you have a system that used older computer hardware you don't necessarily need to move to the latest OS. You could keep the old hardware running and keep the original OS on it. Granted, it gets harder to replace parts that fail, but it must be an option. After all, there are people that keep decades old computers running to support legacy applications.

author: HwAoRrDk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2016, 03:15:05 pm
content: Quote from: Howardlong on September 02, 2016, 06:52:16 pmI seem to recall this was why the external parallel port Zip drives didn't work on Windows NT. You had to buy the more expensive SCSI version if you wanted to use one with NT.Although, the more I think about it now, I recall that Iomega did eventually ship parallel port support for NT, but it was a bit sketchy. Used something like a special driver that presented itself as a SCSI device to NT, and finagled the parallel port hardware behind the OS's back.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2016, 04:00:47 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on September 03, 2016, 03:49:24 amMy PIII was a P6DGH. Very nice MB for it's day.

author: DimitriP
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2016, 06:37:51 pm
content: QuoteOr another way to say this: the reason you have a computer in the firstplace is to run applications. For as long as the application is useful, ther should be a computer available to run it. That's it. There is nothing else. The rest is self explanatory and if someone needs to have it explained, they are the wrong person or company for the job. Neeeeext!

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2016, 06:47:19 pm
content: Sad thing is that almost every South Bridge chipset has a built in PCI to ISA bridge, which actually works very well, and which supports all the legacy hardware ( it has to, otherwise you have no PS/2 keyboard and mouse support, no PC speaker, no refresh controller, no high speed timers and all the other stuff run off the ISA ports) and which has BGA pins on the chip for the serial ports and parallel port. unfortunately most board makers simply leave those balls on the top, with no via even through on them.They then deliberately disable those sections in the BIOS so they do not show up.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 05, 2016, 08:07:59 pm
content: Quote from: joeqsmith on September 03, 2016, 04:00:47 pmI had (well still have) theP6SBA. Was a very nice board for its time. It had one of my favorite old chipsets, the good old Intel 440BX.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2016, 10:01:07 pm
content: A few modern Atom motherboards have parallel ports, presumably for the use case you're after.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2016, 10:44:32 pm
content: I'm concerned because I've been reading that many new computers (those with Skylake chipsets) do not support USB 2.0 natively. This is only a problem if you want to install Windows 7. Which I would. There are hoops and work arounds, but yeah.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2016, 05:25:27 am
content: What is the problem? Win7 supports usb3 and 2 is backward compatible with 3

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2016, 05:26:17 am
content: Quote from: Kjelt on September 06, 2016, 05:25:27 am7 doesn't come with an XHCI driver out of the box. Or even from Windows Update most of the time.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 06, 2016, 10:07:22 am
content: Quote from: Monkeh on September 06, 2016, 05:26:17 amI'm not sure what the drama is? I just plugged in an old USB 1.1 device and it seemed to work fine under Windows 7. My understanding was that USB was designed to be backwards compatible all the way back the original spec?

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2016, 12:19:15 pm
content: The problem is installing Windows 7 when the only available ports are USB 3.0, because Windows 7 has no built-in drivers for them.

author: RGB255_0_0
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2016, 12:44:56 pm
content: Yep, you have to manually add the USB 3 driver using DISM to the boot.wim (and install.wim) so you can use the keyboard and mouse, and you may as well do the same with the SATA but at least with a working mouse you can point to the driver during install.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2016, 01:35:21 am
content: This is the PCIe card that I am using. I bought a few to try but this is the only one I could actually control with the old DOS debugger. But, using their remap program causes it to stop working. The programmer's software is all hardcoded so it should be simple enough to change it.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2016, 01:38:20 am
content: In order to boot DOS off a FLASK key, I just used the HP format utility. I set the FLASH up for FAT32 and used the Window 95 boot files. I wanted to be able to setup all of my old DOS apps while I was at it.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2016, 01:38:46 am
content: Aaahh, a live Intellimouse. Memories.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2016, 01:52:16 am
content: I started trying to debug the code with the DOS debug. Nightmare. I started coding the PC in assembler when it came out and bought MASM and their early C compilers. I had moved these onto CDR cause you never know when you will need to work on some old DOS program.I started out with the first version of Codeview. Another nightmare. Switched to the latest version I had and managed to get it running.Lot's of trial and error but I was able to narrow it down. The problem I was running into is the program is about 700K. That's a lot of trial and error work.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2016, 01:55:55 am
content: A quick search and I found IDA. They offer a free limited version of the tool.Installed it and wow! I went to the sections I had found in Codeview and worked from there. It did not take too long to find what I was looking for.A quick switch to hex and I now have something to search for. Back to the raw EXE.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2016, 01:59:07 am
content: Now this is some pretty crappy code. They have these stupid menus and rather than pass the address, they hard code a separate routine for each address!Early bloatware.Next step, just search the raw EXE for the routines and ZAP them.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2016, 02:01:41 am
content: Only thing left is to try it. Boot the FLASH key and run the software.... Remember the Hercules graphics card??

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2016, 02:03:14 am
content: And bingo.... H/W Rev 2.3 and the serial number!!

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2016, 02:07:22 am
content: The programmer has several built-in diagnostics. The last thing was to run them...And this is how we hack old DOS software.... Now if DOSBox or VirtualBox ever do get something to work, at least I have the hardware all running again.Still not a fan of the Windows 10 but really like the new PC.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2016, 02:10:20 am
content: If you think this belonged in the test equipment area go ahead and move it back. I doubt too many of us used these printer ports for printing.

author: System Error Message
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2016, 05:07:08 am
content: the problem that happens is that when installing windows 7 it doesnt natively have drivers for usb3 and raid chipsets.Some bios allow setting the usb version. Make sure you plug into a usb port that is part of the chipset and not the extra usb ports added via some chip that arent native.Using a usb2 flash drive and not usb3 may work though. If you wish to install windows 7 through usb3 you will need to be able to supply the drivers in some way. For example through a sata drive (a HDD or SSD formatted to fat32 or ntfs) with the drivers or even a disc drive through sata.You can get printer ports on a modern PC through USB or if the motherboard has a header you can use that. However there is another method. You can use something like a raspberry that has a GPIO but it requires doing a manual pinout and some programming. As long as the speed needed for parallel doesnt exceed GPIO than it can be done. With a raspberry pi you can do cups and xsane for driverless printer and scanner sharing. This is an EEE forum, some electronics and hacking should be a solution.USB is serial so usb to serial adapter is easy, but with parallel it will require some programming/chip and converting it requires drivers for the OS to see so its a lot of work but being able to use something that could support it like GPIO perhaps? parallel ports that may be compatible with custom wiring? You can get older or newer PCI/pcie cards that have parallel ports but the drivers might be something to consider.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2016, 05:09:20 am
content: ^ And that's what happens when you make posts at 6am.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2016, 03:59:31 pm
content: Many older programs that had security dongles attached to the parallel port expect the port to be both physical and exist at an ISA address. The programs are not clever enough to deal with the new PCI port numbers.There are motherboards that come with parallel ports but I haven't checked to see if they are located at ISA addresses.Networking an old box to provide print services won't solve the dongle problem. There are MANY ethernet -> parallel port adapters (print servers) around that work well with legacy printers.Despite all of this, there are thousands and thousands of CNC machines running off parallel ports. I use an ethernet based Smooth Stepper because I didn't want to go down that rat hole but the parallel port is still the most common way to implement CNC. I suspect the modern CNC programs can deal with the modern PCI based parallel port. But I wouldn't want to try it myself.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2016, 08:32:09 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on October 01, 2016, 01:38:46 amExactly the one I am using. Have a collection of them, including the older USB/PS2 versions ( but I do not know where those green adaptors are) and even some ball mice with serial connection.

author: richd
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 04, 2016, 12:35:53 am
content: I have an old HP Laser Jet 4P which has a parallel port and still works great. I use this (picture attached) old linksys print server to put it on the network and it works great...