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VB 2008 Program for Testing your Parallel Port

Here is a Visual Basic program that can be used for testing whether or not your parallel port is ready for hacking.

Using inpout32.dll, it is possible to write programs in Visual Basic that control your parallel port. The parallel port can then, in turn, be used to control devices in the physical world.

Installing

Click here to download the Parallel Port Tester.

When installing the Parallel Port Tester, the first thing you should do is find the file named "inpout32.dll" and move it to the directory C:\WINDOWS\system32

Source Code

Click here to download the source code for this program. Should you wish to, it wouldn't be difficult to modify this source code and use it to form the base of a much more capable program.

Screenshot

How it Works

Under "Test Individual Pins: #2-9" you can do exactly that. Enter 2 into the text box, press on, and pin 2 should turn on. Enter 3 into the text box, press on, and pin 3 will turn on. etc.

Under "Test all Pins: #2-9" you can make all of the pins strobe back and forth.  So first pin 2 will turn on and off, then pin 3, then pin 4 and so on and so on until it gets to pin 9 at which point everything reverses direction.

"Read Input from Pins: #10-13"
What you want to do here is connect one of pins 10-13 to a ground pin and click the read from pins button. A number should pop up in the textbox.

"Test a Different Address" will allow you to test another port address, so, if 378 isn't working for you, 278 might do the trick.

 

 

 

 

 

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