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From: Paul on 6 Mar 2010 16:49
Is it possible to read from and write to a parallel port with Windows? I
have produced Parallel Port I/O with DOS (using interrupts or inp/outp)
and OS/2 using DosDevIOCtl (roughly equivalent to DeviceIoControl).

I have tried opening a port using CreateFile. This seemed to work. But
when I tried to read from the port using ReadFile or DeviceIOControl,
the read failed.

I cannot use third party drivers, or even a driver that I might write,
since I cannot change the configuration of the computers I am writing
for. (So I cannot use inpout32.dll since it requires a
driver--hwinterface.ocx.)

I understand that device I/O under Windows must be done through device
drivers--as with other, more advanced OSs--and why this must be. But, I
though Windows (95,NT,98,...,XP,Vista, 7) _did_ have a parallel port
driver. Is this driver just for show?
From: ScottMcP [MVP] on 6 Mar 2010 19:31
On Mar 6, 4:49 pm, Paul <pminott...(a)yahoo.ca> wrote:
> Is it possible to read from and write to a parallel port with Windows? I
> have produced Parallel Port I/O with DOS (using interrupts or inp/outp)
> and OS/2 using DosDevIOCtl (roughly equivalent to DeviceIoControl).
>
> I have tried opening a port using CreateFile. This seemed to work. But
> when I tried to read from the port using ReadFile or DeviceIOControl,
> the read failed.
>
> I cannot use third party drivers, or even a driver that I might write,
> since I cannot change the configuration of the computers I am writing
> for. (So I cannot use inpout32.dll since it requires a
> driver--hwinterface.ocx.)
>
> I understand that device I/O under Windows must be done through device
> drivers--as with other, more advanced OSs--and why this must be. But, I
> though Windows (95,NT,98,...,XP,Vista, 7) _did_ have a parallel port
> driver. Is this driver just for show?

I have not looked into this for the last couple of Windows versions,
but in the old days the Windows driver for the parallel port supported
output only, and only in basic mode. I.e., just enough for printers.

From: Paul on 7 Mar 2010 07:04
On 03/06/10 07:31 PM, ScottMcP [MVP] wrote:
> On Mar 6, 4:49 pm, Paul<pminott...(a)yahoo.ca> wrote:
>> Is it possible to read from and write to a parallel port with Windows? I
>> have produced Parallel Port I/O with DOS (using interrupts or inp/outp)
>> and OS/2 using DosDevIOCtl (roughly equivalent to DeviceIoControl).
>>
>> I have tried opening a port using CreateFile. This seemed to work. But
>> when I tried to read from the port using ReadFile or DeviceIOControl,
>> the read failed.
>>
>> I cannot use third party drivers, or even a driver that I might write,
>> since I cannot change the configuration of the computers I am writing
>> for. (So I cannot use inpout32.dll since it requires a
>> driver--hwinterface.ocx.)
>>
>> I understand that device I/O under Windows must be done through device
>> drivers--as with other, more advanced OSs--and why this must be. But, I
>> though Windows (95,NT,98,...,XP,Vista, 7) _did_ have a parallel port
>> driver. Is this driver just for show?
>
> I have not looked into this for the last couple of Windows versions,
> but in the old days the Windows driver for the parallel port supported
> output only, and only in basic mode. I.e., just enough for printers.
>

That is a pity. Parallel ports are extremely convenient for interfacing
with sensors and robots.

Do you know if the same applies to serial I/O?
From: Bob Masta on 7 Mar 2010 08:01
On Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:49:58 -0500, Paul
<pminottawa(a)yahoo.ca> wrote:

>Is it possible to read from and write to a parallel port with Windows? I
>have produced Parallel Port I/O with DOS (using interrupts or inp/outp)
>and OS/2 using DosDevIOCtl (roughly equivalent to DeviceIoControl).
>
>I have tried opening a port using CreateFile. This seemed to work. But
>when I tried to read from the port using ReadFile or DeviceIOControl,
>the read failed.
>
>I cannot use third party drivers, or even a driver that I might write,
>since I cannot change the configuration of the computers I am writing
>for. (So I cannot use inpout32.dll since it requires a
>driver--hwinterface.ocx.)
>
>I understand that device I/O under Windows must be done through device
>drivers--as with other, more advanced OSs--and why this must be. But, I
>though Windows (95,NT,98,...,XP,Vista, 7) _did_ have a parallel port
>driver. Is this driver just for show?

The place to go for all kinds of port info is Jan
Axelson's Lakeview Research <www.lvr.com>.

As I understand it, the ports were freely
accessible from user mode under Windows versions
through Win98, but XP and later require special
Ring 0 drivers, installed at boot time. There are
a number of such drivers out there, but it sounds
like this is not the approach you need.

On the other hand, if there is a way to make the
standard Windows drivers work, I suspect it will
be discussed somewhere on Jan's site, or one of
the many links she has there.

Best regards,


Bob Masta

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From: ScottMcP [MVP] on 7 Mar 2010 11:03
On Mar 7, 7:04 am, Paul <pminott...(a)yahoo.ca> wrote:
> That is a pity. Parallel ports are extremely convenient for interfacing
> with sensors and robots.
>
> Do you know if the same applies to serial I/O?- Hide quoted text -

All versions of Windows since Win95 have very complete support for
serial ports.

Find the article "Serial Communications in Win32" in MSDN and the
associated MTTTY sample. I tried to give you a link to it, but the
MSDN site is flaky at the moment.

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