Direct access to LPT1

[E Lea]

I'm playing around with a program that controls a small "design cutter" -
it's basically a plotter that connects via the parallel port.

There is some Windows CAD software that knows about the plotter and sends
commands to it, as far as I can tell in one of two ways:

1) Through a printer driver. It doesn't seem too bothered about the details
of the driver though. I'm assuming that one would normally use a generic,
text-only Windows driver. This method, apparently, has the advantage of the
driver buffering the output

2) The second method is a direct connection to LPT1.

With Wine, in the first case I get a message in a dialog box saying the call
to "StartDocPrinter" failed and 

fixme:winspool:StartDocPrinterA (hPrinter=0x1, Level=0x1,
pDocInfo=0x408a28dc): stub

to stdout.

In the second case I get a dialog saying "LPT1 was not found" and

fixme:dosfs:DOSFS_OpenDevice device open L"LPT1" not supported (yet)
err:file:CreateFileW Couldn't open device L"LPT1"!

to stdout.

Is this a config issue? I'm assuming that is should be easier for me to get
the second method working.

[Uwe Bonnes]

> > > > > "E" == E Lea <ed(a)centralmanclc.com> writes:

E> I'm playing around with a program that controls a small "design
    E> cutter" - it's basically a plotter that connects via the parallel
    E> port.

    E> There is some Windows CAD software that knows about the plotter and
    E> sends commands to it, as far as I can tell in one of two ways:

    E> 1) Through a printer driver. It doesn't seem too bothered about the
    E> details of the driver though. I'm assuming that one would normally
    E> use a generic, text-only Windows driver. This method, apparently, has
    E> the advantage of the driver buffering the output

Wine can't run Ring 0 drivers, like something ending in .sys/ .vxd

    E> 2) The second method is a direct connection to LPT1.

    E> With Wine, in the first case I get a message in a dialog box saying
    E> the call to "StartDocPrinter" failed and

    E> fixme:winspool:StartDocPrinterA (hPrinter=0x1, Level=0x1,
    E> pDocInfo=0x408a28dc): stub

    E> to stdout.

    E> In the second case I get a dialog saying "LPT1 was not found" and

    E> fixme:dosfs:DOSFS_OpenDevice device open L"LPT1" not supported (yet)
    E> err:file:CreateFileW Couldn't open device L"LPT1"!

    E> to stdout.

    E> Is this a config issue? I'm assuming that is should be easier for me
    E> to get the second method working.

No. You hit an area of unimplemented functionality.

However Win can translate direct port accesses, either as root to inp/outp
or when configured right, via /dev/parport. Perhaps look around if you don't
find some tool that talks to your device  with direct hardware access. Win31
programms might do so.

Bye
-- 
Uwe Bonnes                bon(a)elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. [phone] -------- Fax. [phone] ----------