How do I use the CreateFile Win32 API to access parallel ports.
I don't want to use a component written by someone else. The definition for
CreateFile in the API guide is complex, and I don't how to pass
parameters to it. Does anyone have any code to demonstrate i/o with
parallel port -- I was told that CreateFile should work with WinNT as
well.

Thanks in advance, please also post to gs...@doc.ic.ac.uk

Gurpal S. Bhachu
Department of Computing
Imperial College
180 Queen's Gate
London SW7

Don't have any code lying around but what mu might wanna do is get a
parallel port component from the net (fw with source) and check the source
to see how it's done which usually gives rather good insight in how it's
done

HTH
  Roel

: Thanks in advance, please also post to gs...@doc.ic.ac.uk

: Gurpal S. Bhachu
: Department of Computing
: Imperial College
: 180 Queen's Gate
: London SW7

I haven't accessed the parallel ports, but rather the COM ports. I
suspect the opening them under a 32 bit environment might be similar.
I've used the FileOpen and File Management routines available in D2
using a file name '\\.\COM1' if I were opening COM1 for example. If I
wanted to open LPT1 I might try something like '\\.\LPT1' for a file
name. Hope this helps.

The world authority on low-level parallel port access is Jan Axelson,
http://www.lvr.com.  She has downloadable DLLs and such, as well as a good
book.