Does anybody know how to access the parallel ports in delphi, or some
library that can be used for this?

Hello everybody. For some reason I need to access the parallel ports of the
computer. I used to be able to access them through win95 and in a pentium
100 computer; but now I have to work with win98 and a p2. Assembly code used
to work in the past, but not anymore.

This is a violation of the protected mode. It is nonsense
that it worked on Win95, but it was permitted for "upgrade"
compatibility.

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/2926/tpf.html
chapter "windows" has workarounds, in case you do not want
to make the clean solution, a device driver. Look for
TinyPort and other DLL solutions, also on the DSP etc.

Franz Glaser

Use CreateFile to get a handle to it, and then use the usual file
accessing routines
e.g.
Var
    lName: Array[0..6] of Char;
    lHandle: THandle;
    lTest:String;
    lBytesWritten: Integer;
Begin
    StrPCopy(lName, 'COM1:');
    lHandle := CreateFile(lName, GENERIC_READ or GENERIC_WRITE,0,Nil,
OPEN_EXISTING,
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, 0);
    lTest := 'Test';
    WriteFile (lHandle, lTest[1], Length(lTest), lBytesWritten, Nil) ;
    CloseHandle(lHanlde);
end;

Reading from the port can be done a similar way

HTH
Allan

Allan Carlton

Author of Delphi Central at http://www.innotts.co.uk/~zephyr
Providing Delphi Articles, Tutorials and Hints.