[Linux-parport] old ISA parallel port card

[Jouni Laakso]

Thanks Stephen. It was helpful. It really was as you
wrote. Now only io-cards floppy connector works, and
parallel port can be used both from motherboards
connector and io-cards connector.

I switched bios-setting for integrated parport to be
0x278 and irq 5 to give room for card, but instead it
seems that card has this address and integrated on
motherboard has the same without doing enything else
than swapping cable to other connector! as might had
been the case with floppy also. Floppy had no irq
settings on board, maby it is allways same. Also
setting Pnp to Legacy Isa in bios for IRQ 7 was (maby)
required. Others are still PnP configured.

Luckily it did not take the whole day. I had time to
do something else also, because io-board had jumper
settings printed on board. But irq was setted to be 7
and address as 0x378 on board, not 0x278 and irq 5 as
in bios settings. How can it be like this.. I tested
only with reading the address (pins states).

It seems to work for the purpose. I havent tried
printing.

jnl

 --- Stephen Mollett <molletts at yahoo.com> wrote: > 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
>  

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