Port control using DOS in WinXP

[acropolite (Phil)]

I've seen a few posts where people are frustrated by the fact that XP excercises control over com and serial ports making it difficult or impossible to use older dos based programmes. I have found an app which allows control of both serial and parallel ports called DirectIO. I have a copy which was purchased from JED micro here in Australia. I haven't tested it yet but I was assured by JED that it works very well. I will test some time in the near future and report back for anyone interested.

[Gama]

This will come in very handy for people with Mel Bartels system.
You can now run your software on the same system, and also run other windows programs in the background.
Hope it works.

[AndrewJ]

Another freeware option is USERPORT
http://www.embeddedtronics.com/design&ideas.html
I use this quite a lot with W2k and XP to get low level
access to my parallel ports, and it works well
( havent tried a dos app in a dos box though )
You can open up yr selected ports fully ( ie all progs have access )
or,
if you write yr own program,
it can selectively open the ports for itself
whilst still blocking other apps. Very Flexible.
I note the download page also lists a thing called DirectIO ( for free )
Dunno if its the same thing

Andrew