Re: LPT Problems in XP

Jeff wrote:
After I and my Friends tried several PCI cards with no success, I checked with a number of manufacturers who have the most configurability (including tech support at www.lavalink.com and and www.cablemax.com (sold thru USBGear and SerialGear) (LPT-1284-LP, 159548, 158343, etc.)). They infomed me that as far as they know it is impossible due to the OS.

Since the time I posted this I have found that as of XP, Microsoft no longer supports fully featured LPT or COM ports. According to Microsoft's article: "Legacy I/O Removal to Advance the PC Architecture", (and a number of others I might add) the ability to have IRQs, DMAs, and I/O address ranges is part of the intentional abandonment of anything having to do with ISA architecture. This is for the embetterment of humanity by "Removal of obsolete, slow, complicated, and often poorly understood interfaces offer[ing] obvious benefits toward this end: simpler, more robust machines, and a lower cost of goods." From what I can gather, the plan is for abandonment to become more guaranteed by Vista and its progeny.

My hypothesis is this: When COM and LPT ports are built into the motherboard, the designers have the ability (at least for now) to add special hardware and software in the BIOS that may still allow these ports to operate in a relatively fully featured way. However, if you happen to have a motherboard without them and try to add them with a PCI card, it will no longer be possible (as of XP) to have any fully featured ones on your computer, so just get over it. It takes about 2 person-months of labor to reconstruct my development environment on a new machine.

Of course, this leaves me with very expensive development systems for electronics and ICs which I can no longer support with Microsoft. I'm hoping some creative soul has come up with some viable alternative, but judging from what I've seen in many days of internet searches, there is no commercially available solution.

I hope and pray someone truly proves me wrong, but after nearly a dozen people who deal with things like this as their daily job have come up enpty-handed, a solution does not seem likely.

PS: While this is clearly an operating system caused problem, I will also try the hardware group to see if they have any conceivable work arounds for Microsoft's abandonment of OS support for legacy I/O requirements as of XP.

The motherboard has a Super I/O chip. Check the part number on it and
download a data***. The parallel port will be on there.

Asus has about three options for parallel I/O. Fully supported and available on
the backplate. Fully supported but provided by a header on the motherboard
and needing an adapter. The third option is to not pinout the parallel port
any more, and perhaps, disable that interface at the BIOS level, so it won't
be enumerated by Windows. If Windows cannot see the enumeration, there is no
reason to support it.

Making the setting visible in the BIOS, is possible with some BIOS editing
tools. For example, I have an older motherboard with a hacked BIOS, where
someone made more of the available settings visible to the user. This is
not an easy thing to do for someone with no experience in that area
(me included).

So it could be just the BIOS interface level that prevents the interface
from working. You might well find that the Super I/O still has the interface.

To use it, you'd still need to connect external resistors and connector and
whatever else a parallel port uses. I don't believe the port needs to be
buffered, and the necessary drive exists at the Super I/O level to make
it work.

"Abandonment" starts with the motherboard. If you'd selected a motherboard
with a parallel port, then no problems. The Asus "workstation class" motherboards
might be one alternative, rather than a "gamer" motherboard. The
workstation motherboards are at the end of this page.

http://www.asus.com/products2.aspx?l1=3&l2=-1

P5NT WS has an Nvidia chipset and a parallel port. Plug it in, do a
repair install, and enjoy.

http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/13-131-173-03.jpg

680i LT specs are here. Also, check the reviews, because not all aspects
of this design are perfect. The more obscure a motherboard is, the fewer
BIOS updates it receives. I'm only suggesting this motherboard, because
of the large number of PCI Express lanes it offers.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/nforce_600i_tech_specs.html

Paul
.