Comments on: PC Parallel Port Interfacing

By: dfowler

dfowler — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 18:50:48 +0000

Sebastian,

This project and it’s code was implemented and worked fine on Windows XP. One thing that might be causing you some problems is that the data line are input and output capable. You may need to put a pull up resistor on each line to see anything happen when you output. I sugest that you initaly play with one of the dedicated output signals to do a basic test.

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 16:36:20 +0000

I’ve have tried several methods accesing the parallel port.
I’ve used inpout32.dll, and at first it seems OK. But checking the status of the pins with a voltimeter shows that nothing is changed. I’ve tried every resource to access the parallel port in Windows XP, but I think the last choice is to program a driver myself. Has anyone manage to use inpout32.dll successfully in Windows XP? Is there any secret config missing?

By: dfowler

dfowler — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 06:22:20 +0000

Salaheddin, I do not know about the avaialble training programs in the U.K. I sugest that you google around or maybe one of the other readers will have a sugestion. You might try IRC look for a UK chat room and ask in there.

David

By: Salaheddin I. Allid

Salaheddin I. Allid — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 14:11:24 +0000

Hi;
I’am intrested in studying and practical training on interfacing electronics of PC for control, measurment & data acquizition .
I need a one year training program in U.K
Can you help me to got such a training program, and all the expenses will be paid by my goverment.

sincerely yours.
Salaheddin I. Allid

By: dfowler

dfowler — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 21:15:42 +0000

Clifton,

Yes, you should not drive anything but basic digital loads from the parallel port directly. To use the parallel port one should include digital buffers then from those buffers drive high current switches or relays to control significant loads.

By: dfowler

dfowler — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 21:12:25 +0000

Vlad,

The PC interfacing has the advantage of being very easy to do some basic experiments. It is very limited in terms of speed compared to a uC but is advanced in other ways. For example if you wanted to make an analog meter that showed the DOW. You would need to write some fairly complex code for the uC and support an Ethernet connection etc… With the PC you could use C# and web services to get the DOW value and write out a value to the parallel port to drive the meter. On the other hand, if you wanted to do a bench O-Scope, you would be much better off with a uC.

By: dfowler

dfowler — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 21:08:40 +0000

Tim,

The DLL you need (inpout32.dll) it linked in the post and the source code is in C# and should be easy to convert to VB.

By: xSmurf

xSmurf — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 20:03:43 +0000

I really like this project, not that it’s anything fancy, but the way you mounted the board is very clean and neat.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 18:39:21 +0000

This is so cool to learn how to reference stuff using a PC.

By: clifton Howard

clifton Howard — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 15:27:10 +0000

On another note if you use a decoder/demux you can get more than 8 outputs. It just makes it harder to keep track of what is going on but you can get 2^n outputs which is nice