Re : Parallel ports

Jeff Barlow wrote:

> Jon,
>
> I agree that "The PC parallel port is pretty deterministic". The nature
> of the problems I have seen are related to the fact that the PC parallel
> port is not _a_ thing but a whole lot of different things depending on
> which chip set you use, how PnP decides to share IRQs, etc. EPP will
> work fine on some machines and hang on others.

Yes, I've seen a little bit of that. It seems that some BIOSs don't even have
EPP, but if you set it to ECP, it seems to work pretty well.

>
> Folks like you and I can fight with these things and get them to work.
> (Hell, we might even think it's fun.) OTOH, a whole lot of people buy
> "compatible" parallel port peripherals, plug them in, can't get them to
> work, and return them to the store.

Yeah, well I think this may be true, but you need to work with stuff
when you set it up. I'm hoping to make this thing pretty straightforward.
I could have a diagnostic that tells what is wrong. Also, you can run it in
SPP mode, which should work under any circumstances, just a little
slower.

Jon