I'm not sure if this topic belongs to this board, but I don't know where else to ask this question. I would deeply appreciate any help, since I've spent too long on this without getting anywhere I'm trying to connect 2 PCs back to back with "standard" parallel port (master-slave). From what I've found out the standard parallel port is for output, but it can be used for 4 bit I/O with handshake to transfer 4 bits at a time. I know that there are 8 data pins for output, 5 status input pins and 4 control pins used for input/output. The problem is I can't figure out how to connect the pins. Thank you in advance. [edited by - pars on November 29, 2003 8:06:58 PM]

1. Make sure ECP is enabled in the BIOS for each PC. ECP or BiDirectional will need to be on to do 2 way data comms.

2. There are pin connection details here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=142324

3. You can buy pre-made cables with the above pins connected - search for something like "Parallel Null Modem Cable".

--
Simon O''Connor
3D Game Programmer &
Microsoft DirectX MVP