From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Sep 9 23:59:53 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id XAA21697 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 9 Sep 1996 23:59:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from relay-4.mail.demon.net (relay-4.mail.demon.net [158.152.1.108]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id XAA21688 for ; Mon, 9 Sep 1996 23:59:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from post.demon.co.uk ([(null)]) by relay-4.mail.demon.net id ad02360; 9 Sep 96 13:42 GMT Received: from radan.demon.co.uk ([158.152.75.22]) by relay-3.mail.demon.net id aa19697; 9 Sep 96 14:42 BST Organisation: Radan Computational Ltd., Bath, UK. Phone: +44-1225-320320 Fax: +44-1225-320311 Received: from support-5.uk.radan.com (support-5 [193.114.228.134]) by uk.radan.com (8.6.10/8.6.10) with ESMTP id OAA02288 for ; Mon, 9 Sep 1996 14:13:11 +0100 Received: by support-5.uk.radan.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id OAA18592; Mon, 9 Sep 1996 14:20:17 +0100 Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 14:20:17 +0100 From: Mark Ovens Message-Id: <199609091320.OAA18592@support-5.uk.radan.com> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: FreeBSD & parallel ports X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I have found a very weird problem on my PC concerning the parallel port (LPT1). I have Windows95, OS/2 Warp, and FreeBSD2.1 on my machine and have recently installed my company's CADCAM software (we are a software house) under W95. As is common with PC's this is protected by a dongle on the parallel port I can use W95 & Warp without any problems, but if I boot FreeBSD and then boot W95 then the dongle detect program reports the dongle cannot be found. This occurs even if I power-cycle the PC between BSD & W95! Sometimes several power-cycles will cure the problem, but the only guaranteed way I have found to reset the port is to boot DOS & run Norton's Diagnostics on the port with a loop-back plug attatched, then power-cycle, & boot W95. I know it is the port not the dongle that is the problem as it occurs even if I remove the dongle prior to booting BSD. What is really weird is that the problem survives power-cycling. Can anyone tell me what is going on here? and povide a solution. The port is on a basic IDE card based on a UMC chipset. Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Mark (marko@uk.radan.com)