11-05-2021

Inpout32 Dll Serial Port Examples Of Onomatopoeia

Preliminary story

Option Strict Off Option Explicit On Module InpOut32_Declarations ' Inp and Out declarations for port I/O using inpout32.dll. Public Declare Function Inp Lib ' inpout32.dll' Alias ' Inp32' (ByVal PortAddress As Short) As Short Public Declare Sub Out Lib ' inpout32.dll' Alias ' Out32' _ (ByVal PortAddress As Short, ByVal Value As Short) End. InpOut32 is a windows DLL and Driver to give direct access to hardware ports (for example the parallel and serial port from user level programs. Copy the DLL file inpout32.dll and the lib file inpout32.lib to the project folder. From the Project menu, select Settings, go to the tab Link, in Object/ Library Modules, write inpout32.lib. You may use CPaPiC in different ways. For example, you can: create a static or dynamic object, or; derive your class from CPaPiC.

There is this program which uses the Parallel Port to synchronize with other hardware. It will set the Parallel Port output to a specified (byte) value. This works without problems when using the built-in Parallel Port of a PC. The target platforms are Windows XP to 7, all worked fine so far. Source code is in Delphi, accessible and can be modified.

How it works

Parallel Port

In Delphi I can use the io.dll to set the value of the Parallel Port, but there are also other solutions available, like inpout32.dll or port.dll. I call something like PortOut, specify a port number and the byte value and the port is set.

Inpout32 Dll Serial Port Examples Of Onomatopoeia

What I now want to do – and where I need help

Inpout32 Dll Serial Port Examples Of Onomatopoeia

Vb 2010 Serial Port Examples

Now the change: this needs to work on a machine which has no Parallel Port built-in (not even on the mainboard). There are several options available:

  • use a USB to Parallel Port adapter to add a LPT port to the PC
  • use a PCI card which adds a LPT port to the PC
  • use a PCI Express card which adds a LPT port to the PC

I am currently heading for and concentrating on the easiest and cheapest possibility: a USB to Parallel Port adapter.

Main question

There seem to be differences between Parallel Port adapters which are made to connect just a printer and other adapters which seem to be more powerful. Is there really a difference? Or can I just use one of these 5$ printer-adapters, plug in my own hardware and access the port from Delphi code? Or do I need a special adapter? Has anyone experience with this? There is a related question here, but the different adapter types (if existent) are not mentioned there. This page suggests that there are indeed differences:

Serial Port Adalah

Contrary to all other USB parallel ports which can connect to printers only, this makes connection to most hardware.

I hope there exists a solution via USB because for this you don’t have to open the PC, which means the adapter can be added on demand.

Sub-question

Do you have experience with PCI (Express) solution? I have to use one if the USB approach is not successful.

Answers:

Serial Port Examples

Since I’ve been wrestling with this very thing recently here’s what I’ve discovered; If you mean by using IO port addressing (indicated by your reference to inpout32.dll), no. Unless your USB-parallel port driver supports full port emulation or virtualization, which most do not, this is generally not possible. If you need to directly access the port to do normal “bit-twiddling”, you should get a separate Parallel port PCI-card. Most of them present themselves as normal IO at the standard address(es). I am presuming you’re not planning on using the parallel port to actually communicate with a printer, right?

Python 3 Serial Port Examples

What is interesting is that USB-Serial adapters are much easier to use since they appear as simple virtual devices where you can merely “open” them using a simple stream; TFileStream.Create(“COM1”, fmOpenRead) or Windows.CreateFile(“COM2”, …);

Serial Port Pinout

Here is some devices that purport to do full emulation of a parallel port through USB: