I gave up on using the parallel port in Vista64 and moved on to a usb pololu motor driver/controller.
Had it swapped in and rotation working in a couple hours.
I'm using Mala with the Startcom plugin and a batch file (copied from TopJimmyCooks) to trigger rotation via pololu command lines.
I'm having a couple issues and wondered if anyone else has had them and found a solution.
First-
The rotation is working fine, but when launching a game in MAME after rotating the screen, MAME will work normally for about 5 seconds, then shrink down to a small title bar in the upper left corner of the desktop. I can still hear it, but Mala is also active and playing video snaps.
The only way to fix things is to bring up task manager and kill the proccess (switching to MAME does not bring it back).
I think MAME, startcom, & my batch file are tripping over each other at some point, but if I have startcom not launch the game until after rotation, it still happens.
It only happens with MAME, not other emulators. I'm using SGT's all-in-one list method where Mala is pointed to a batch file to launch the appropriate emulator rather than pointed to mame.exe. I guess that's another batch file executing at the same time as the others.
Having Startcom rotate Mala after the game exits instead of before it launches, fixes the issue, but I'd rather have it rotate before the game launches, while everything is hidden behind a splash screen (which I haven't added yet).
Strange thing is that I could have sworn it wasn't doing this before I installed a new layout that had both horizontal & vertical layouts included.
EDIT: It's possible that I changed some setting related to layout resolution or re-ordering the layout. Hmmmm...will have to experiment with that when I get home.
Second-
I copied TopJimmyCooks batch file to rotate the screen back to horizontal when Mala exits, but Mala is still in the vertical layout next time it is started.
Is there a way to make Mala start in the horizontal layout every time?
I'm loving having a big monitor for both directions.
Thanks to all who made this a possibility.
I'd be interested in hearing about any other problems that have crept up and what you did to overcome them.