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Hardware

What's Hanging on Your Parallel Port? 45

Posted by Cliff from the dongles-r-us dept.
CryoStasis asks: "A buddy of mine reciently stated that 'You're not a real techie unless you have some weirdo contraption hanging off your parallel port." This comming from a guy who is using his for programing some type of micro-controller (he's being rather secretive about it until he's finished). I've decided to go into a different direction however and currently have an old NES PowerGlove hooked up that I use as a game controller. It works great and brings a whole new dimention into gaming. On the side I'm also looking at getting some kind of mouse script functioning desktop applications, no more mouse for me!. So what about everyone else. Who has something odd/unique hanging out of thier parrellel port?" Call me boring, but the only thing that hangs off of my parallel port is my printer, however I'm sure that there are a few of you out there who put their parallel port to some novel uses. Care to share?
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What's Hanging on Your Parrellel Port? More

What's Hanging on Your Parrellel Port?

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  • Re:Programming.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    bah????

    That's precisely why NT/2000 don't let you address it, or any other hardware for that matter.

    You see, I'm sure that you are an excellent assembly programmer and that your programs never fail. But, as your bah comment indicates, you won't take the time to learn how the system works as a whole. This means that your software might/probably won't play well with others, destabilizing the entire system. For this reason, NT makes you go through the HAL to access hardware. The HAL won't let you "bah" the system.

    Works for me.

  • Re:Programming.. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    no...but the HAL will let you "BSOD" the system instead.
  • IIRC, traditionally the only place you could hit the parallel port directly from user space was x86, due to some legacy design ideas. That is to say, linux on alpha also requires a kernel driver.

    Though, there appear to be new /dev files in 2.4 that offer direct parallel port access. Don't know if they're portable.
    --
    Change is inevitable.

  • Gotta love those ibuttons...

    www.ibutton.com
  • At my last job, I made a box that hooked to a parallel port and an AT&T phone. The box was attached to the leds on the phone. By reading the parallel port, the computer could tell which extensions were in use.

  • 9-pin! (Score:3)

    by unitron ( 5733 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @11:22AM (#172911) Homepage Journal
    Doesn't a dot matrix count as a "wierdo contraption" nowadays?
  • Oh man! Remember when those things were free+shipping?! Now they are $40? Wow. I don't know if I'd pay that much for the kit.

    ObParallelPort: I had a set of LED's on mine that reported processor load, etc. I lost the stuff on a job move though. Maybe it's time to rebuild!

  • I'm poking around on the back of my system, but I just don't see anything like that. Digital video, S Video, Firewire, USB, some audio ports... But a "parallel port?" Maybe that's some fancy new thing that my Apples don't have yet?

    -Waldo
  • and a a printer have all hung off my parallel ports at one time or another.

    The sound thing is neat, it was intended for notebooks, and runs in wfw3.11.

    I finally bought a new web cam, so I can take my PC with the webcam on it and keep it in Linux, instead of dual booting.
  • Wasn't there an old Disney sound box that hooked up through the parallel port?

    Anyway, I just though I'd point out the worst thing ever to get hooked up to the LPT port: The Xircom Pocket Ethernet Adapter [ebay.com]. And, gack, even one for Token Ring! [ebay.com]

    It seems a general truth of PC hardware is that anything hooked into the parallel port that isn't a printer is bound to work poorly if at all.
    --
  • It's not quite parallel per se, but my serial port has the X-10 [x10.com] FireCracker [x10.com] remote control module hanging off it.
  • I only have a Xilinx CPLD programmer on my parallel port. On the other hand my serial ports regulairly get to talk to my Parallax SX Blitz and SX Key, a Microchip PICSTART programmer, and a computerised timing gate for recording the velocity of the balls my coilgun shoots. Another one of my computers talks to a couple of motor controllers and a few touch sensors.
  • Xfree86 3.3.6 used to lock up the display, mouse, and keyboard quite a bit on my laptop, so I kept a paperclip in my bag. A daemon was set up to monitor the parallel port, and when I shorted two particular pins it would do a clean shutdown.

    Xfree 4 fixed it. But I sort of liked the MacGyver factor.

  • Check out "The button"! (Score:3)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @08:07AM (#172919)
    http://www.acm.wpi.edu/sinlab/

    You push the button, and it updates the web page... It also has a row of LEDs that blink in a pattern that is settable over the web.

    It's completely powered and controled by the paralel port.
  • I'm just configuring some templates for a wireless printer, used for printing parking tickets by officers with handheld computers.
  • HAH, got that beat! I am the operator for a VAX cluster....8 hours a day, watching all my terminals, making sure everything is still going....15 xterms that I use all day long....

  • Back in the day... (Score:4)

    by AtariDatacenter ( 31657 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @07:28AM (#172922)
    It isn't there anymore. But back when I was crusing along with my 386/25, I got together the plans and put together one of those home-built D/A converters. The actual use for this device, however, was sound. Basically, it allowed you to play digitized sounds through the parallel port. And I'd play a lot of MODs through it. Those were good stuff. Of course, it was mono, and 8 bit, and not super high frequency. Frankly, even a SoundBlaster Pro would have been better.

  • Other uses... (Score:3)

    by eric2hill ( 33085 ) <eric@[ ]ck.net ['ija' in gap]> on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @05:22AM (#172923) Homepage
    I have a Rainbow [rainbow.com] dongle for my copy of Lightwave [newtek.com]. AutoCAD [autodesk.com] in the single user version (not networked) also comes with a dongle.

  • Just one, with two more free ports. It's a VT420 on a MicroVAX 3100-80. The VAX is technically on a shelf, though, not in a closet.
  • I have a webcam, printer, and for the strangest device I've seen up here yet, a

    laser pointer.

    It's hooked up through a solid-state relay so you can switch it on and off . . . it doesn't get used much now, I had it blinking net traffic on the wall at one point, but the original reason it got hooked up was for some experiments in ultra-low-cost direct datalinks between apartments. (After a fellow geek and I realized our rooms had line of sight.) We got some basic comms working with a $9 laser pointer and a simple light sensor, but it was tooo&nbsp slow for any kind of real use. Plus those 'N' batteries go quick with all that switching (and aren't cheap!) Kind of cool though.

    Tap THIS, echelon! :)

  • An interface for advanced programming of various TV/home theatre remote controls by Universal Electronics (makers of Radio Shack and OneForAll remotes).

    Check out http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jp1 [yahoo.com] for more info.

    Bob

  • I once had a dual D/A, 8 relay system set up off of a parallel port, controled 450 volts at 6 amps, and 12 volts at 10 amps to do "seasoning" of Tungsten-Halogen lamps in a "weightless" (not really, of course) environment.

    --Mike--

  • Nope only kernel level processes can bluse screen a nt box, user mode apps just gives a useless Dr. Watson
  • ... made from big ol' stepper motors salvaged from an pair of 5MB (if I recall correctly) removable hard drives that each were bigger than your typical tower box today. The hard drive cabinet was the size of a refrigerator.

    Tape reels for wheels and darlingtons for power (one amp at 5V per coil, up to two coils active per motor at a time).

    Motors bolted together back to back with shorter bolts at top and longer bolts at bottom, so axles are slanted and center of gravity is below center of wheels (and thus balances on two wheels, tho it rocks back and forth a bit when it starts or stops).

    Programmed (in Forth [forth.org] of course) to do a series of military maneuver farces.

    Had to build my own parallel port when I first built it, but a PC-clone port works fine. (Original machine was a Sanyo Z80 CP/M box with ribbon cable for a bus: I stuck a Z80-PIO on it).

    The thing was so goofy/hilarious I entered it into the annual student art show/contest and had it on display for a couple weeks. I used to love to sit in the lounge and see people come around the corner and confront it. They would walk in when it was pausing between performances and jump two feet in the air a couple of minutes later when it started to wave its flag like a maniac, turn in place, and do zig zags. Poor art-lovers didn't know what to think.

  • Back in college (Score:4)

    by chrysrobyn ( 106763 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @06:07AM (#172930)
    Back when my Linux server was hanging on my pegboard wall with no case, I had LEDs on it. I used them for indicating waiting mail, etc. Also fun to cat /dev/hda to it. Of course, I wouldn't be a real EE geek if I hadn't put at least one motor on it over the years. I've had 2 DC motors and 6 steppers on the two parallel ports. (Use relays and an external supply or you'll burn your drivers.) Remember, you can't spell "geek" without "EE".

  • Re:NS (Score:3)

    by paulywog ( 114255 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @08:33AM (#172931)
    I've got a pug-dog that hangs around behind my computer! I don't tether her there, she just seems to like it. At least that's better than her hanging around the front of the computer where all of her shedding hair can get sucked in by the front fan and distributed across the motherboard...

    I wonder if dog hair conducts electricity? Hmm...
  • Amongst common uses of the parallel port besides the standard of printers, there are lots of other devices that attach to them, like scanners and Imation [imation.com]'s SuperDisk [superdisk.com], which is a device like a ZIP-drive, but that can store 120 MB (maybe newer versions support more). I'm sure you can find other common uses, like control of cars and other electronic devices -- kids do it a lot, controlling something like a car or an electronic arm connected to the parallel port with the adequate software.
  • Hey dingle dangle
    check out my new dongle, word!
    Hung like elephant.

    Word Nick, good karma hording story.
    The chuckster

  • controlling something like a car

    Some day I hope to do just that. I got as far as streaming live video out over the internet from a wireless camera mounted to an R/C car. My next step was to hook the controller up to a webserver and setup controls on a website. But I never got around to doing this. Maybe I'll do it someday. The streaming video was neat though!

    As for what's hanging off my parallel port right now? An old laptop sans a NIC, using PLIP to route a connection to the net. And my other boring parallel devices are a CD burner, a scanner and a printer. Unfortunately nothing out of the ordianary.
  • it's fun to program the Parallel port under Linux, DOS, win9x, I was working on a dongle project, the thing that killed me was when I arrived on NT/2K.... you need kernel-mode drivers to address it, now there are some packages to help you to do it but... when you're a micro-controller programmer that does everything in assembly, programming the NT DDK isn't the same ballpark... I was completely lost and was too lazy to learn it (had to learn C++ and windows programming... bah :) )
  • I currently have a special cable built for programming the gameboy advance hooked up to LPT1.

    check out http://www.devrs.com/gba/files/mbv2faqs.php

  • Along the years, I've had a couple of interesting things attached to the parallel port.
    • An interface to a Dreamcast VMU for uploading / download save files and mini-games.
    • A ribbon cable to a small board that looped back into the case to the front that provided a row of LED's to display CPU usage. (Actually, I used a dual parallel port add-in card to get 16 output lines for 16 mini green LED's).
    • An adapter to use Sony Playstation controllers for PC games.
    Also, I guess this doesn't exactly count because it's not a standard parallel port card... but I used the Datel PC Comms Link card to talk to a Sony Playstation through a Pro Action Replay with modded firmware (Caetla).

    Cryptnotic

  • I've seen "electronic counters" attached to the computer. One implementation of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test has a small piece that attaches to the paralell port. The piece is accessed by the program which decreases a counter inside the box every time a test is taken. That way, MBTI can charge you per test you make avaliable.
  • but then again it's a Motorola StarMax clone and my keyboard and mouse are plugged into its PS/2 ports too...

    Too bad most mac printer drivers aren't parallel port savvy :(

  • I usually wish my notebook didn't even have a parallel port. It does nothing but take up space.

    Call me boring, but of all the desktops I have, just one has a printer hanging off its parallel port. I think a more interesting question to ask would be how many terminals do you have hanging off the Vax in your closet? (2/8) ;-)


    --
  • a while ago before I got something that could do midi, I had a flat, rectangular wooden panel with a few sheet metal squares screwed on it each connected to a different data pin. Two sticks wrapped in coax shield were used to supply voltage to any metal square touched and a sound was triggered on detection....voila'...homebrew drums......the port was on an amiga though....
  • I'm building a PIC programmer that is controlled by the parallel port.
    Sad part is that I'll probably only ever use it once to program the chip needed for the *BIG LOUD VOICE* Universal Infrared Reciever! [geocities.com]
  • It's not really related the the parallel and data transfer, per se, but often you'll see a tethered child hanging around the back of my system. I don't know why really. He's just there.
  • Ok, as a college project I was tasked with pointing a radio telescope (basically so they could watch shomaker-levy crash into Jupiter a year or so later). Used the parallel port to send the commands to turn antenna up/down/left/right and get feedback from the antenna on where it was pointed... From there is was just a bunch of math to figure out where to point the antenna when I was done
  • Xircom makes a nice PP Ethernet adapter perfect for that 386 laptop that doesn't have a PCMCIA slot. And it even has the cool "tank tread" for tightening the screws, and hauls at 48k/sec on a standard parallel port! (Oooooh.)
  • A few years back i build a small device for my parallelport, it could support 8 different apliances at home (on/off only, booring now adays, i know). so i could have my 4x86 to brew cofee as well as start the toaster in the morning.

    I only got to the testing phase, as i lost interest (plus the small problem with toasters and such turning on when i was not at home..) It only cost me a burned out parallelport, as i forgot some resistors in the first model.. a.k.a. Ooops!

    Well at least learnt to include protective resistors between computers and home made stuff..

    Yours Yazeran

    Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.

  • i removed my parallel port and serial ports. my system is all ps2 and usb. leaves irqs for modems, NICs and capture cards

    m.kelley
    www.mkelley.net
  • At the school I go to we have a bit more of a telephone running off a bit less than a parallel port.
    It is actually a BBC Micro that is pre-programmed in BBC Basic to ring the school bells by switching on the tape motor for a few seconds then back off again.
    The cool thing is, we can set our clocks to synchronise with the BBC and can be all set to leave class at exactly the right moment.

    Back to Something totally boring, I only have a Zip drive running of my ppa port BUT i do have this strange old "Portable Hard Disk" that is ment to connect somehow. How? I have no Idea.

  • Right now I have a Zip drive, a scanner, and a printer daisy-chained off my laptop parallel port. Yes, they all work like that (I wouldn't try using them at the same time though). At school this year I had a 486DX2/66 with a 4G drive in an old HP scanner network module (these are just big enough to hold a motherboard, hard drive, and three cards). It runs Slackware of course. This year I had several LEDs, one of which ran across the room to the partially disassembled peephole. A simple shell script let me use fetchmail to tell if I had email from down the hall. Last year I hacked a Nintendo R.O.B. and mounted a webcam on it, attached limit switches that interrupted the signal that was making it move in that direction. With a couple simple CGI scripts it was a robotic webcam. One day it received over 12% of all hits within my school's domain, more than the school's main page!

    By the way I'm a double-E at Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech [rose-hulman.edu], great school. Check it out if you think you're smart, and still have the chance to go to school. I chose it over MIT and Cal Tech.

  • I don't have a printer--I'drather recycle an electron than kill a tree... Just ~1/4" of dust (~6mm for you folks @ NASA).

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