Parallel Ports and hardware access under WIN32

(image curtosey of http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~ih/doc/par/)


(image and text quoted from http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~ih/doc/par/doc/regpins.html)

             Register  DB-25     I/O   
Signal Name    Bit      Pin   Direction
===========  ========  =====  =========
-Strobe        #C0       1      Output 
+Data Bit 0     D0       2      Output 
+Data Bit 1     D1       3      Output 
+Data Bit 2     D2       4      Output 
+Data Bit 3     D3       5      Output 
+Data Bit 4     D4       6      Output 
+Data Bit 5     D5       7      Output 
+Data Bit 6     D6       8      Output 
+Data Bit 7     D7       9      Output 
-Acknowledge    S6      10       Input 
+Busy          #S7      11       Input 
+Paper End      S5      12       Input 
+Select In      S4      13       Input 
-Auto Feed     #C1      14      Output 
-Error          S3      15       Input 
-Initialize     C2      16      Output 
-Select        #C3      17      Output 
 Ground          -     18-25       -   

(Note again that the S7, C0, C1 & C3 signals are inverted)

I could swear I've logged all these links before, but apparently not. The parallel port is a useful little bugger, about every year and a half I seem to look into it again...



Drivers:
Driverlinx - Free, parallel port only: http://www.driverlinx.com/ftp/unsupported/port95nt.exe
DriverX- $400ish, great if you're doing a PCI board, or your own USB board: http://www.tetradyne.com/driverx.htm
DeVaSys- free driver/app source code which interfaces to the parport.sys driver
http://www.beyondlogic.org/usb/usblptpd11.htm


Links:
http://www.lvr.com/parport.htm