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Parallel port on a XP PRO Machine
DYNAGOD:
I work in a machine shop and we use an old DOS program called Easytalk to communicate with our CNC machines on the shop floor.
this program is ancient and has no support.. its essntially just a beefed up hyperterminal with file management.
The powers that be wanted to upgrade the entire shops PC's and bought a XP pro machine for the machine shop.
Clearly this old DOS program does not like the XP enviroment.
Its designed to use a Standard Parallel Port (SSP) configuration and uses
SSI_ACT=50,50,50 in the autoexec.bat.
now xp pro uses a Enhanced Serial Port (ESP)by default and has no option to reinstall with a Standard Serial Port,plus no autoexec..
becasue of this, the Hardware protection module that plugs into the parallel port and enables the software cant be read, so the software comes up with a security warning and shuts down the program.
Does anyone know of a way to configure a Parallel port to SSP or where i can find a SSP driver?
tmasman:
Is the hardware key a "Sentinel"?
There are XP drivers for them floating around in the net. We use some windows based software to run our latest CNC machine (although it looks like it came from the Win 3.1 days) on an XP machine & it uses an old hardware key called a "Sentinel".
Anyhow, look around for drivers on the net... If yours is a sentinel, let me know & I can email them to you.
Good luck!
SirPeale:
You could always downgrade the machine to use DOS. Or...radical concept here...go back to using the old machine. You know that old adage "if it's not broke, don't fix it"? It certainly applies here. Your 'upgrade' is causing downtime, which is costing the company money. And I'm guessing that the use of the XP machine won't speed up the process of actually doing the work.
PacManFan:
It's not just that application.
Under Windows NT,2000, and XP, The operating system doesn't allow applications to talk directly to the I/O ports. That means any DOS/Win95/Win98 program that trys to open the serial/parallel/ whatever ports directly without going through the API of the OS will bring up a dialog box saying that it can't.
Now, that being said, there are programs that will allow older applications to access the port directly by opening a Ring0 interface between the application and the IO port. I'll see if I can dig up a link for you.
-PMF
RayB:
OK it's been a long time, but my understanding is that a Paralell port is NOT the same as the Serial port. So which port is your device supposed to use?
Nextm have you already looked in the BIOS? That's usually where you configure the ESP/EPP modes of the ports...
~Ray B.