OT - BASIC Interpreter

Is there a way to access the printer port using GWBASIC or Turbo Pascal in
XP?
There's too much overhead rewriting all the old Basic, Pascal programs? I
tried the unworkable utility called PortTalk already.

"Skybeginner" wrote in message
...
Is there a way to access the printer port using GWBASIC or Turbo Pascal in
XP?
There's too much overhead rewriting all the old Basic, Pascal programs? I
tried the unworkable utility called PortTalk already.
Look for 'allowio'. It should have been with PortTalk, as a 'demo' of how to
use PortTalk. You can run a program to access the LPT1 printer port, by
simply using:

allowio yourapplication.exe 0x378

You can use any port address you want (you gain access to the entire 'page'
of 8bytes). You can even use /a to allow access to all ports, but obviously
this brings the caveat that you can then do a lot of damage by accessing
ports you shouldn't...
PortTalk itself is designed for authors who are writing applications that
want to use ports from inside NT/XP etc.. Allowio, is a simple command line
'wrapper', to allow existing applications access to some ports without any
re-writing.

Best Wishes

You have to tell XP to enable those ports before using the program.
Since I don't use XP, I'm just repeating what I've heard. There is a
mechanism for doing this.

--
Bob May
Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less.
Works every time it is tried!

Allowio is exactly the utilty that didn't work on my laptop.
It's part of the Porttalk.zip.

Did it work for you?


"Skybeginner" wrote in message
...
Is there a way to access the printer port using GWBASIC or Turbo
Pascal in XP?
There's too much overhead rewriting all the old Basic, Pascal
programs? I tried the unworkable utility called PortTalk already.
Look for 'allowio'. It should have been with PortTalk, as a 'demo' of
how to use PortTalk. You can run a program to access the LPT1 printer
port, by simply using:

allowio yourapplication.exe 0x378

You can use any port address you want (you gain access to the entire
'page' of 8bytes). You can even use /a to allow access to all ports,
but obviously this brings the caveat that you can then do a lot of
damage by accessing ports you shouldn't...
PortTalk itself is designed for authors who are writing applications
that want to use ports from inside NT/XP etc.. Allowio, is a simple
command line 'wrapper', to allow existing applications access to some
ports without any re-writing.

Best Wishes

"Skybeginner" wrote in message
...
Allowio is exactly the utilty that didn't work on my laptop.
It's part of the Porttalk.zip.

Did it work for you?
Yes.
I have used it (and the Porttalk package itself), for dozens of different
applications with no problems. Are you sure you are setting the port address
correctly, _and_ that the port is configured correctly. Remember that on
most modern machines, the port will be configured in the CMOS to EPP, not
SPP. The EPP mode, uses DMA, and extra high I/O addresses, and may not work
for a program designed to talk to an SPP port. Hence you must set the port
to SPP in the CMOS (and allow XP to find it again with these new settings),
before you can use the port this way from an application. Also remember that
the I/O addresses are not allways the same. IBM laptops default to setting
the port on the old 'MDA' printer address, not the default LPT1 address.
Again verify in the CMOS that the port is set to 0x378.

Best Wishes

"Skybeginner" wrote in message
...
Is there a way to access the printer port using GWBASIC or Turbo
Pascal in XP?
There's too much overhead rewriting all the old Basic, Pascal
programs? I tried the unworkable utility called PortTalk already.
Look for 'allowio'. It should have been with PortTalk, as a 'demo' of
how to use PortTalk. You can run a program to access the LPT1 printer
port, by simply using:

allowio yourapplication.exe 0x378

You can use any port address you want (you gain access to the entire
'page' of 8bytes). You can even use /a to allow access to all ports,
but obviously this brings the caveat that you can then do a lot of
damage by accessing ports you shouldn't...
PortTalk itself is designed for authors who are writing applications
that want to use ports from inside NT/XP etc.. Allowio, is a simple
command line 'wrapper', to allow existing applications access to some
ports without any re-writing.

Best Wishes

"Roger Hamlett" wrote in

Yes.
I have used it (and the Porttalk package itself), for dozens of
different applications with no problems. Are you sure you are setting
the port address correctly, _and_ that the port is configured
correctly. Remember that on most modern machines, the port will be
configured in the CMOS to EPP, not SPP. The EPP mode, uses DMA, and
extra high I/O addresses, and may not work for a program designed to
talk to an SPP port. Hence you must set the port to SPP in the CMOS
(and allow XP to find it again with these new settings), before you
can use the port this way from an application. Also remember that the
I/O addresses are not allways the same. IBM laptops default to setting
the port on the old 'MDA' printer address, not the default LPT1
address. Again verify in the CMOS that the port is set to 0x378.

It uses ECP and does include the 0x378 address.
I'll have to check if it can use SPP.