PDA

View Full Version : Monitoring the parallel port



costre
April 18th, 2008, 09:05 PM
I posted this elsewhere, but I thought I'd give this forum a shot too

My question is this:

I'm going to use the parallel port to control a series of lights. It has worked before, in WIndows XP. First I need to see that the software outputs through the parallel port without plugging anything in.

Is there a software that lets me monitor the parallel port(s) to see if there is any data going through as my application is running?

Kinda like this little application: http://www.esc.auckland.ac.nz/mason/Courses/Computer%20Systems/Pictures/parmon.gif

I ran it in XP, alongside the program controlling the parallel port, and I could see the changes in real-time.

Thanks in advance

nanotube
April 18th, 2008, 11:22 PM
if you are up to playing with python, you could look at
http://pyserial.sourceforge.net/pyparallel.html

costre
April 19th, 2008, 07:28 PM
Thanks, but I'm not into programming myself :)

I went ahead and ordered two parallelport-testers, a small device with diodes that indicate activity over certain pins. Easy to use for testing/debugging purposes.

https://iftools.com/pictures/ledtester25-big.png

nanotube
April 22nd, 2008, 06:02 AM
hm, well, if you are not into coding, i found an oss parallel port monitor: (there may be others as well... i just did a quick websearch...)

http://www.ucc.asn.au/~steve/

under the downloads section, he has a parallel port monitor:
http://www.ucc.asn.au/~steve/dl/parallelPortMonitor.tgz

well, the hardware you bought is probably a nice alternative, too :)