Question : How to set up a Parallel card under DOS and Windows

equipiment:
Inspiron 530, Lava Parallel-PCI card, HP Laserjet 4P
softweare
WordPerfect 5.1+, Windows XPH

background:
Imagine you are WordPerfect 5.1+ trying to get a print job out.  You expect standard IRQ and address resources.  So you use the bundled HP Laserjet 4P driver unpackaged from WPHP1.ALL file and you proceed to pump out bits to the parallel port.  These fly through the cable and end up at the Laserjet 4P unit where a nicely formatted page prints out.  This is what I would like to happen.

questions:
So I am planning on installing the Parallel card.  Remember my WordPerfect 5.1+ runs in DOS VM in WXP. I've never had to install on of these cards before.

My guess is I must run both the DOS as well as the WIndows drivers. Questions.
#1  The Lava card says it grabs the 'next' IRQ.  How will I know what resources it got?  DOS BIOS?
#2  Will it automatically be available as LPT1
#3  WordPerfect 5.1+ wants IBM standard IRQ and memory addresses. I read in the cards documentation that this can be software configurable.  If I do that will it mess up the Windows use of the card.

You can tell I'm no DOS guru by the way.  Thanks for everyone's help.  The goal is to install this card at customer's location and not have to go back a second time - must be right the first time.


 

Answer : How to set up a Parallel card under DOS and Windows

I'm not sure.  I think it should just dump to LPT1 via the OS.  The one machine I could check seems to act that way, it has no parallel port - LPT1 is a Novell captured port.  In my case Novell may be doing some magic though...

I would think you could at least get the I/O address to a standard and an intterupt that WP can use.  I would bet it will work regardless of the I/O and IRQ as long as the DOS driver sees the port and you can print from DOS (copy autoexec.bat LPT1).

You may be able to fake it out if it gives you trouble...
Some other info:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/158780
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/printfromdos.htm