why not support parallel port(LPT)?

[stonestrong]

why not support parallel port(LPT)?

[Perryg]

Moving to suggestions

@stonestrong,

This has been asked a lot, please search for these questions before posting by using the following:

• You can do a search on Google.com using your search key words and followed with site:forums.virtualbox.org
  example -- USB not working site:forums.virtualbox.org

[mpack]

This has been asked a lot, please search for these questions before posting by using the following:

Asked a lot, but never adequately answered IMHO. I personally was glad to see someone starting a fresh discussion rather than tack another message onto the existing - apparantly completely ignored - old thread.

The MO of VBox is to emulate legacy hardware, and to provide a platform in which people can run legacy apps. LPT support is a strange omission given that purpose. Even stranger, the code for it seems to be there in the OSE source tree, but I don't know if it works, and the GUI doesn't provide a way to enable it like it does for serial ports. I would really like to know if this is "can't be bothered" or "can't be done".

In my case the interest has nothing to do with printers, it's support for strange devices like JTAG debuggers, PROM programmers and dongles which are controlled by LPT port pins. I know several people who need to run old apps on legacy OS's because they are tied to drivers for these strange devices. I would love to be able to sing the praises of VBox to these people!

[HolgerB]

@Perryg:
I have to agree with mpack:
A quick googling on lpt port site:forums.virtualbox.org
immediately reveals a lot of threads which were not commented
by anyone from Sun.

LPT port devices are a dying breed in mainstream but still
used once in a while for industry devices (e.g. PROMer, Dongles, etc).

Just my euro cents,
H.

[klingoncowboy4]

In my case the interest has nothing to do with printers, it's support for strange devices like JTAG debuggers, PROM programmers and dongles which are controlled by LPT port pins. I know several people who need to run old apps on legacy OS's because they are tied to drivers for these strange devices. I would love to be able to sing the praises of VBox to these people!

That is an area that is sadly becoming increasingly less supported in general. Serial > USB converter cables do provide an adequate solution if you need additional serial ports (or your motherboard has none). But to my knowledge Parallel (LPT) > USB cables don't. They only work well for printing and not for embedded devices. This might be because USB is a serial protocol.

Native LPT support would be nice, though more and more embedded platforms are supporting USB natively. If there are any LPT > USB converters that work for this purpose would supply a workaround. VirtualBox could in that case treat the LPT port as a USB device and then the guest OS would have the drivers installed to use it. But as I said to my knowledge there are none that are sufficient for this purpose.

Of coarse if you are doing anything with serial, using adapters, and com ports beyond 1 or 2 then you would need to do the same thing as VirtualBox will only handle Com 1 and Com 2.

[mark rumsey]

New motherboards are still being built with embedded Parallel Ports and Com Ports, although they are few and far between. Perhaps the biggest supporter of the onboard Parallel and Serial port is Gigabyte who have built motherboards for the new Core i5 (Lynnfield) processors that include Parallel and Serial ports (via motherboard headers). Clearly they still see enough of a demand to go to the expense of designing them into new boards, which means the demand for the ports themselves must be significant. It is also intersting to note that the boards they fit them to cover a fairly broad spectrum, from the budget end right up to the top end boards. Also, these on board ports use the same IRQ, port and DMA settings as they have always used making them one of a very tiny number of components with fixed addressing. If motherboard makers can see the importance of having parallel ports in the hardware, surely it is clear that VitualBox should be able to support them even if that support is limited to physical onboard ports at the default addresses.

[belanger]

True ... a USB to parallel adapter can help

BUT

when using an operating system that doesn't support USB, like DOS, we need parallel port support.

From my reading VMWare has support for parallel ports, why not Virtualbox?

PB

[mark rumsey]

Unfortunately, most USB to LPT adapters are simply printer interfaces, nothing more. They don't provide any support for non-printer parallel devices. All they do is present a parallel printer on a USB port. The only add in ports that do anything differently are those on expansion cards (PCI, PCIe or PCCard for laptops), but these don't use the 'real' parallel port addresses (port 378, IRQ7) which means many applications using parallel dongles cannot use these ports to find the dongle. The only solution is a physical onboard port using the original addresses, but that is only going to be any use if VirtualBox includes parallel port support!

[jim5617]

There isn't much I can say that hasn't already been said about the lack of support for LPT in Virtualbox. I like Virtualbox and joined this forum just to register my support for inclusion of LPT. I can't really use it now.

[PhR]

I have to run old CAD programs with a dongle on parallel port. These programs are mainly DOS based and can only run in a Windows NT environment. I wanted to use VB but no parallel port support ... so I am using now VirtualPC 2007. Is there any reason to not implement the parallel port support as many people on this forum are requesting it ?.

[PhR]

I just downloaded the new version 3.1.2. Support for parallel port is still not available. I think that developers don't understand that this fonctionnality is not only required for Centronics printers (most of them are disappearing) but also and especially for dongles support ... May we get from the team an information if they intend to add support for parallel ports and when ?. Il not I will switch back to VMware or VirtualPC ...
Many thanks in advance for your answer and best regards,

[fscardua]

I need the parallel port support to use with Parallel Dongle.


Regards,
Fabiano Scardua

[wlkmn]

I also request support for parallel port in VB, because I need to use a LPT dongle (Senintel security). Hope to see it in the next release. Many thanks in advance.

[jorgensen]

Agree that the parallel port information is limit.
However, I have noticed this in the xml profile

<UART>
<Port slot="0" enabled="false" IOBase="0x3f8" IRQ="4" path="COM1:" hostMode="HostDevice"/>
<Port slot="1" enabled="false" IOBase="0x3f8" IRQ="4" hostMode="Disconnected"/>
</UART>
<LPT>
<Port slot="0" enabled="false" IOBase="0x378" IRQ="4"/>
<Port slot="1" enabled="false" IOBase="0x378" IRQ="4"/>
</LPT>

Cannot test it, because I do not have a parallel port.

[MrMirror]

Thanks for your notice, jorgensen. Unfortunately it doesn't work, modification of these settings is simply ignored by VB.
I guess these parameters are "sleeping" placeholders, for the moment...

I need the parallel port for a low-cost ByteBlaster (FPGA/CPLD programmer), I hope they will support LPT too.