LabVIEW
Parallel Port Comms on a 64-bit Windows 10 machine
Hello,
Are you trying to achieve GPIB communication with an instrument. If so it should be possible with the drivers provided by the Manufacturer or NI.
Hi Alex,
use an USB-to-parallel port converter. They are available similar to USB-to-serial converters…
@AlexAbelson wrote:
I am trying to communicate with a legacy instrument that uses the parallel port. I know that this is not easily done on a 64-bit OS. I searched google and the forums and found some inkling of people who may have succeeded in achieving this.
So, is there any way to use Labview and communicate with a parallel port on a Windows 10 64-bit OS?
It really depends how the software uses the parallel port. If it simply uses the serial port (yes Microsoft treats both ports as serial port, one is bit serial and the other is byte serial) Windows API or NI-VISA then there should be no problem, or rather you might still have a problem as parallel ports are nowadays pretty uncommon on computers. But here the suggestion from Gerd with an USB converter should work.
If the application however uses the parallel port to bit bang data through direct register calls then yes that is gonna be difficult.
@RavensFan wrote:
A digital output module?
In order to accommodate the ~5ms requirement, I would say it would need to be either a High Speed DIO or an FPGA board. Personally, I would be more inclined to go with the FPGA board as it gives me A LOT more control. cRIO or an sbRIO would be another option (thinking myRIO at the moment). Or you could even go with an Arduino board and give it instructions through the serial port (thinking LINX or a custom sketch and application). There are plenty of ways to do this.
Where does that 5ms precision come from? Why and how? If you want to create pulses on the digital port with such a precision then it's going to be problematic, if you want to make sure that all 8 lines change within that time then there is no poblem. So what sort of signal do you need? You mentioned 8 digital lines that all need to be changed at the same time. Why is that? If they all change at the same time you could just as well use a single digital output to control all the 8 channels in parallel.
