parallel port access?

[Jochen Küpper]

>>>>> Suchandra Thapa wrote on Thu, 07 Dec 2000 08:26:19 GMT:

Suchandra> The parallel port and serial port controls are really
Suchandra> platform specific.  Windows has a standard serial interface
Suchandra> but for the parallel interface, windows 98 allows direct
Suchandra> access but nt requires a kernel driver.  Unix systems
Suchandra> probably have there own oddities ranging from non-pc
Suchandra> machines which may not have a parallel or serial port to
Suchandra> whatever access mechanisms linux/*BSD/HURD have.  The task
Suchandra> would probably come fairly close to writing a new driver
Suchandra> for each platform.

Well, on many unices there is the common idea of a printer beeing a
file:-) This means you have a driver sitting behind it, and simply
writing to that file sends your data to the port.
Direct access to the ports in general requires kernel-level priorities
or root-access and going through ioperm or such...

I don't see a need to write a driver for each platform, only DOS
probably, which doesn't bring one by itself [1].

So I would say you'll need a generic wrapper function for sending data
to the OS, that's it. On Unix I'd say all the problem reduces to find
out wether there is a printer-file and what it is called.

Greetings,
Jochen

[1] Then a parport is such a simple device, for most applications you
really don't need a real driver...
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