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New Okay. <breathe> <breathe> <breathe>. Ah, crud.
So, I have this problem you see. It is called Windows 2000/XP.

See, I have this other problem, a DOS Application written in 1997.

DOSApp need to access Parallel Port (LPT1) Driectly. Has to, cannot be changed as software soruce is lost forever. The publisher purged it out of the source code repository.

Okay, in Windows 9X, Direct Access is just fine. WindowsNT you can allow it. Windows 2k/XP/2k3, sorry you have to go through the kernel.

Been on the phone all this afternoon, dealing with Microsoft with this very issue. Apparently, there is NO WAY to allow a user process to access the Hardware Parallel Port directly. Not without paying $3,000 for an "Access Driver" which effectively gives the user full control of the Port. BTW, that is $3,000 per machine. But not from Microsoft and the "Free" ones don't work.

Now, I guess I am high. Because I expect there to be more whining about this. There is little if any.

Now, I have read somewhere(yeah, but can I find it? NO) some way that you can allow usermode stuff to access the hardware directly.

Can someone point me to a good reference to defeat this "protection for my own good"?
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
[image|http://www.danasoft.com/vipersig.jpg||||]
New OS/2 Warp will let you do that. PortTalk?
If you want a quick solution, that is. If your hardware isn't too bleeding-edge. It would be ideal on an old Pentium. OS/2 is nearly ideal for multitasking old DOS applications.

I assume you've looked at things like [link|http://www.beyondlogic.org/porttalk/porttalk.htm|PortTalk] for Windows? I haven't tried it myself...

Luck!

Cheers,
Scott.
New OS/2 & not too bleading edge hardware.
I've yanked OS/2 hard disks out of older machines and stuffed them into Athlon 3000+ machines and they work fine. You just have to buy a license for Snap to use current video cards. Main limitation is C: partition has to be 2-Gig or less or networking won't install claiming disk is too small.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
New Isn't a new install still a problem?
E.g. If one bought a copy of Warp 4 off of eBay, one would still need to do some magic with the install floppy (e.g. getting the latest danis506 package, etc.) if one wanted to put it on a new PC with, say, a SATA hard drive, wouldn't one?

Do you know if eCS is friendlier in this regard?

I've got a copy of Warp 4 and eCS v1.1 (I think) that I've never installed because I didn't want to take the time to try installing them on my Athlon machines. My last OS/2 machine was a Pentium 233.

Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.
(Who used OS/2 from ~ June 1992 until ~ October 2001 and still misses it in some ways...)
New Yes, you do need to update floppy #1 . . .
(of the 0,1,2 set) but it's real easy to do. As for eCS, it should be right up to date on that. Unless they've changed in the recent release you get an eCS install if you boot on the first CD, an OS/2 Convenience Pack install from the second CD, both of which recognize large hard disks. I don't know about SATA yet.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
New Locks the DOW session
DOW == Dos On Windows

PortTalk works... but then it doesn't.

This is a production machine, it has to be an icon or a batch file... no changing users midway etc...

GDMF. I HATE WINDOWS!
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
[image|http://www.danasoft.com/vipersig.jpg||||]
New What are the specs?
Maybe the IGM can come up with an alternative solution. I'm willing to look at it. If you can't post it, you can email me. my user id @ email dot USPS dot gov
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail ... but, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "Damn...that was fun!"
New The program.
is not anyway shape or form able to function without Direct Unimpeded Raw Unrestricted Access To The Parallel port.

It is dumping ASCII (7 bit) straight into the device, it recognizes ~ and the CR/LF as the only special characters.

I feed the program, records that are 45 characters wide and 8 lines long.

Last line has a ~ as the first char. It produces the Postnet Barcode that way.

It adjusts delay using whitespace for each line.

It has to have DURUATT Parallel Port.

If you want I can make it a D/L'able. Single proggy == 124357 Bytes

Amazingly this sucks.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
[image|http://www.danasoft.com/vipersig.jpg||||]
Expand Edited by folkert May 12, 2005, 04:46:57 PM EDT
New Inkjet printer. Who's?
New Astro Machine Corp.
The program was custom written by BCC Software (yes that BCC Software) for Ohio Addressing (the Mailing equipment Re-seller). They gave Ohio Addressing 100% of the source/etc, purging it from the repository. Ohio Adressing promptly lost it completely or discarded it not realizing.

We have a slew of AJS-9500 (Astrojet II) that are all working on P120 machines and slower, using DOS v4.01-6.22. These are the ones I am aching for. With the 9500 we get 60,000 impressions per cartridge. So the cartridge cost is minimal, seeing as we get them in bulk.

We also have Domino Inkjet(6 head), Prism Inkjet(8 head) and Cheshire/Videojet JetstreamII (4 head) and Videojet 9000 imaging system with 8 heads. These are recirculating ink, flow-cycle time based machines and have already been proven to work in Win2K/XP even though they are older than dirt (except the 9000)
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
[image|http://www.danasoft.com/vipersig.jpg||||]
New Re: The program.
Can you try XP
it will let you run the exe as Win 98

A
Play I Some Music w/ Papa Andy
Saturday 8 PM - 11 PM ET
All Night Rewind 11 PM - 5 PM
Reggae, African and Caribbean Music
[link|http://wxxe.org|Tune In]
New First line in the initial post
So, I have this problem you see. It is called Windows 2000/XP.
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail ... but, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "Damn...that was fun!"
New Yeap Tried that too.
It actually got farther with W2K than with WXP.

For the time being, since I have a deadline to meet with at least 2 of these machines... I am adding Win98 to the production area. BUT this cannot last, My plan is to rid me the problems of administration of Win9X/ME which is cauing me twice the headache, as I have to have 2 setups for Win9X as compared to W2K/XP.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
[image|http://www.danasoft.com/vipersig.jpg||||]
New BTW, an FYI.
It didn't dawn on me until recently that your little danasoft signs can't identify the OS when I'm using OS/2and Firefox.

Haven't tried it with Mozilla or old Netscape on OS/2, but I'm pretty sure it won't get it right even then.

Just checked Netscape 4.61 on OS/2. Same result.
Expand Edited by n3jja May 15, 2005, 09:49:29 PM EDT
New Well, they're wrong in other ways, too.
Never mind the trivial feat of finding out my IP address -- there is, too, a spoon!


   [link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad]
(I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Your lies are of Microsoftian Scale and boring to boot. Your 'depression' may be the closest you ever come to recognizing truth: you have no 'inferiority complex', you are inferior - and something inside you recognizes this. - [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=71575|Ashton Brown]
New It gets my OS and browser right...
...but the IP and ISP are completely wrong.


Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
New Can you take a disassembler to the DOS prog?
It's really brute force, but maybe you can hack it to use Windows calls with a driver/shim of some sort.

Don't ask me how though. :-/

It sounds like you've come across one of those [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=25831|transparent aluminum mirror] problems. :-(

But you enjoy a challenge, right? >:-)

Luck!

Cheers,
Scott.
New Not much direct help from here, but my wife uses a...
product ([link|http://www.pcquilter.com/|a robotic quilting platform for a sewing machine]) which is controlled by a bi-directional parallel port and runs on XP as well as earlier flavors of Windows. The product, including all the hardware and related software is about $1100. So, obviously these folks found a way.
Alex

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -- Bertrand Russell
New They are not doing direct access.
They are doing "pseudo-direct access" or with a driver built for the purpose.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
[image|http://www.danasoft.com/vipersig.jpg||||]
New Have you seen this?
[link|http://www.beyondlogic.org/porttalk/porttalk.htm|PortTalk]. They say source code is available.

[edit] add [link|http://www.logix4u.net/inpout32.htm|Another].
Alex

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -- Bertrand Russell
Expand Edited by a6l6e6x May 12, 2005, 04:27:50 PM EDT
New Yes, and Yes.
Both LOCK the CLI Prompt hard.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
[image|http://www.danasoft.com/vipersig.jpg||||]
New take a boo at direct io
[link|http://www.direct-io.com|http://www.direct-io.com]
might take a little work to get the memory mapping but a possibility
thanx,
bill
All tribal myths are true, for a given value of "true" Terry Pratchett
[link|http://boxleys.blogspot.com/|http://boxleys.blogspot.com/]

Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 48 years. meep
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
New Used it first... shoulda mentioned it.
It was a W2K freeze out.

If I even started the program with directio in place.

Userport, Directio, Porttalk --- plus a few others. GAH!

Nothing is working. I also found out the program is written in Delphi. As seriously old a version, as you can have. They(BCC Software) can't even remember what version it was written in.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
[image|http://www.danasoft.com/vipersig.jpg||||]
New Scrap the crap app, get a new Winders program in stead. HTH!
New Well, if you know of someone that...
Can write a new one for minimal cost... (You know the number I mean too)

BTW, the old one is written in OLD Delphi. (Or what became Delphi)
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
[image|http://www.danasoft.com/vipersig.jpg||||]
New You're looking at him.
If you have avatars enabled, that is.


   [link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad]
(I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Your lies are of Microsoftian Scale and boring to boot. Your 'depression' may be the closest you ever come to recognizing truth: you have no 'inferiority complex', you are inferior - and something inside you recognizes this. - [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=71575|Ashton Brown]
     Okay. <breathe> <breathe> <breathe>. Ah, crud. - (folkert) - (25)
         OS/2 Warp will let you do that. PortTalk? - (Another Scott) - (15)
             OS/2 & not too bleading edge hardware. - (Andrew Grygus) - (2)
                 Isn't a new install still a problem? - (Another Scott) - (1)
                     Yes, you do need to update floppy #1 . . . - (Andrew Grygus)
             Locks the DOW session - (folkert) - (11)
                 What are the specs? - (jbrabeck) - (9)
                     The program. - (folkert) - (8)
                         Inkjet printer. Who's? -NT - (broomberg) - (1)
                             Astro Machine Corp. - (folkert)
                         Re: The program. - (andread) - (5)
                             First line in the initial post - (jbrabeck)
                             Yeap Tried that too. - (folkert) - (3)
                                 BTW, an FYI. - (n3jja) - (2)
                                     Well, they're wrong in other ways, too. - (CRConrad) - (1)
                                         It gets my OS and browser right... - (pwhysall)
                 Can you take a disassembler to the DOS prog? - (Another Scott)
         Not much direct help from here, but my wife uses a... - (a6l6e6x) - (1)
             They are not doing direct access. - (folkert)
         Have you seen this? - (a6l6e6x) - (3)
             Yes, and Yes. - (folkert) - (2)
                 take a boo at direct io - (boxley) - (1)
                     Used it first... shoulda mentioned it. - (folkert)
         Scrap the crap app, get a new Winders program in stead. HTH! -NT - (CRConrad) - (2)
             Well, if you know of someone that... - (folkert) - (1)
                 You're looking at him. - (CRConrad)

I didn't think people ate those...
94 ms