bigbondfan

is there any way to control the parallel port in VB6. I need to individualy change what each pin does (on, off or earth).

Berto

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/parallel-port2.htm that will help in figuring out what it does, and i doubt you could have that much control over the port using VB6 you will have to go down to assembly i think.

__________________
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Rory

You can communicate with any device as in any other language:
Though this requires intimate knowledge of the PnP device protocol, etc. Theoretically you can therefore do this:
Sending A would set the port to 65 which in binary is 01000001 so it should set pins 1 and 7 high and the others to low. However, in practice, the drivers may impose an abstraction layer, and handle the start, stop and parity bits at a lower level: you'll just have to experiment! (This is more or less a total guess: this is what happened in gwbasic, but there are probably die hard 1970s enthusiasts that'll gut me for saying this).

However, parallel ports only have a shared earth "pin" (the metal cladding): the rest can only be "on" or "off": if you're seeking to connect to an external circuit, you should buy a purpose built device as used in schools: directly connecting the motherboard to a 9v battery would destroy it.

If you are using a serial device such as a modem or the serial port, VB wraps this functionality in the MSCOMM object:
and LPT1 should work, though you'd be best to check the MSDN archives. Again, if you set the communication settings correctly (no parity, no stop bits) you should be able to control each pin individually.

bigbondfan

Thanks, I will continue to experiment with VB. I do have the whole of Visual Studio, I've just never programmed in any other language before.