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Programming Parallel Port in Win2k an XP Problem

Hello everyone.
Not sure if this is the correct are to place this question but it was the closest I could find.
Here's my probelm:
I am currently writing a program which will communicatewith the parallel port on my PC to an external RF transciever. A friend of mine has tried something similar already and he tells me that I may need some kind of driver. Im doing this on win2k and then maybe win XP. Could someone tell me if this is true. I will be writing the code in C++. Where do I download this driver from and where do I put it when I download it? Is there any chance that I could do harm to my machine if I don't use it corectly or put it in the wrong place?

Why have microsoft done this anyway? is it just for security?

Thanks for any help you might have.

Jase-Coder

Yeh microsoft have done this for security reasons

this site may help ya
http://www.lvr.com/parport.htm

George Tokas

Jase-Coder's suggestion will help you a lot.
BUT if you use like us Borland's C++ Builder then I suggest to look at IOPort component from www.winsoft.sk
You can use this component to communicate with Paralel port (or any other I/O port you like) but you have to add IOPort.sys to your drivers directory.
Comment: Microsoft want to make our life hell.

gtokas.

Cayce

Using the giveIO driver will greatly simplify your life.
After installing giveIO from your application you can just use the standard IO calls inport and outport.

http://www.littlesounddj.com/awkiawki/index.cgi/GiveIO

fr_cassidy

ASKER

thanks for the replies guys,
haven't realy got time to try until later today. I'll get back then to let you all know how it goin.
thanks again
fr

fr_cassidy

ASKER

Has anybody every come accross the porttalk program available free for download at http://www.beyondlogic.org/porttalk/porttalk.htm? It seems good but I haven't installed it yet.

Or has anybody every successfully managed to program the parallel port using windows 2000 or xp. Some of the links above tell me im using the software at my own risk. I'm not really prepared to take any chances. Surely there must be a reliable straight forward way to allow access to the ports?

Thanks again for any suggestions
fr

fr_cassidy

ASKER

Hello again,
Does anybody know anything about the driver inpout32.dll? I found it at http://www.logix4u.net. The documentation seems to be sketchy. It says to copy it to the system folder but I can't find out what I have to do in the existing C++ program. Would I have to include the driver some way? and also somewhere I read that instead of using inp or outp as I do in C++, you have to use inp32 and outp32. Does anybody have any ideas on this? Is this a better option than the porttalk program mentioned above? There seems to be no installation and no initialisation before the program is run. It seems you just work away as normal once you mave the driver to the correct location and possibly make some changes in your own code?

Thanks again,
fr

fr_cassidy

ASKER

Ok, thanks for all your comments. Just got it going. Downloaded a program called userport found in a google search, which install a driver and allows you to configure which addresses you want to open. very simple to use and reliable so far. I'd recommend it. it was hard to find any documentation on the proper procedures for the programs/drivers mentioned above.

thanks
fr

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yagomera

Hello, i have the same problems moths ago,

I use a dll driver called UserPort. It's free, it's easy to install.

With wthis program, now, you can use the paralel port in Windows Xp like Windows 98.+

Try it beacuse perhaps you haven't change your actual code. If runs in w98 then will run in xp