[Linux-parport] old ISA parallel port card

[Stephen Mollett]

Hi,

On Thursday 15 January 2004 06:55, Jouni Laakso wrote:
> 1) How or where can I find a linux driver for it?
> 2) How can I find out if it is a parallel port and how
> can I check what card it is for the driver for the
> card, and where to find the driver?

If it is a parallel card (quite likely - from your description it sounds like 
one of those old "multi I/O" cards which used to provide floppy, IDE, serial 
and parallel), the driver would be the standard "parport"/"parport_pc" 
combination.

> 3) What address is on the ISA card and is it (too much)
> harder to make a test-driver for it?

The address is probably set using jumpers (or possibly a bank of tiny DIP 
switches) - you'll need to play with the jumper settings until you find out 
how to disable the bits you don't want or need (eg. floppy interface) and set 
the address of the parallel port. You'll probably have a choice of three 
addresses for the port - 0x378 (LPT1 on DOS), 0x278 (LPT2) or 0x3BC (LPT3). 
The interrupt may be hard-wired to IRQ7, or the card may switch to IRQ5 for 
I/O 0x278, or you may be able to choose with another jumper.

If your BIOS is fairly recent (late 1990s), you may be able to get away with 
just disabling the FDD, HDD and (optionally) serial ports and setting the 
port addresses for your onboard ports in BIOS Setup to "auto". The BIOS 
should probe for non-plug-and-play ports at the standard locations then set 
the onboard addresses to avoid them.

Be prepared to fiddle with it for ages. I spent the best part of a day getting 
one working, and I never did figure out how to disable the floppy interface - 
I ended up having to disable the onboard one and use the old card instead!

HTH,
Stephen