Basic Parallel Controller on W2K

[wolfertz]

Are there any issues with running the basic parallel controller on windows 2000? or have we chosen the wrong type of controller?

We have...
...installed Vixen 1.1.11
...set up a simple 8 circuit parallel box as shown on the computerchristmas site
...selected the basic parallel plugin

but we cannot get the lights to come on/go off.

We have have tried all three ports settings,
The SSR's work (we used a 5 volt power source to test them)

any other suggestions as to what we should check or do?

We are new at this so any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated

thanks

[A Marchini]

Are there any issues with running the basic parallel controller on windows 2000? or have we chosen the wrong type of controller?

We have...
...installed Vixen 1.1.11
...set up a simple 8 circuit parallel box as shown on the computerchristmas site
...selected the basic parallel plugin

but we cannot get the lights to come on/go off.

We have have tried all three ports settings,
The SSR's work (we used a 5 volt power source to test them)

any other suggestions as to what we should check or do?

We are new at this so any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated

thanks

Can you test the data lines from your parallel port and see if they are changing? Basically look at the voltages on the 8 data lines. As vixen turns them on/off they should go high and go low.

What model SSR did you purchase? Are you sure they have a low enough voltage requirement for your parallel port (again, a reason to see what the voltage is coming out of the data pins on the parallel port). Other specifications about the SSR could be gleaned just from reporting the SSR type.

You also might want to look at Portmon http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/portmon.mspx which may be a useful debugging tool (I haven't tried it yet so I could be wrong).

Tony

[wolfertz]

Sorry for the delay in replying... the ssr's are opto 22 120D25's.

In the meantime I tried a clean install of the OS (win2k pro) and reloaded Vixen (just to see what would happen).

Using Portmon (that's a neat little program, thanks!), it seems like Vixen isn't writing to the parallel port. I tried several of the other serial based plugins and it seems that it can send signals to them without any trouble.

I checked the bios and have tried both the spp and the epp settings for the parallel port.

The Device manager shows lpt1 as using 0378-037f as the settings, the plugin is set to use 378 for parallel port 1.

Any other suggestions?