New MB with LPT & serial COM port

[raymond2000]

Some people still have some programmers, or legacy devices that need LPT or Serial COM port
Installing a PCI-e cards such as "moschip mcs9901 LPT and COM port”, may be useful for some applications and its better than these USB LPT cables, however the issue is with the legacy I/O address such as 378h, 3F8h, etc

Mentioned in Q8 @ http://www.asix.com.tw/faq.php?op=faqdetail&PItemID=120&FaqNoID=#432
Q0008:    Is it possible to remap the I/O addresses of MCS99xx Parallel/Serial ports to Legacy I/O address values?
A0008:    In order to be compatible with some legacy software, some users might need to remap the assigned I/O addresses of MCS99xx Parallel/Serial ports to Legacy (ISA type) I/O address (such as 378h, 3F8h, etc.). It is possible on DOS and Windows 95/98/ME operating systems but impossible on Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/7/8 operating systems because the Remap I/O Address feature is only supported on DOS and Windows 95/98/ME operating systems but is not supported on Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/7/8 operating systems. As the newer Windows systems maintain a much tighter control over the I/O devices and prevent any Re-Mapping I/O Address operation at device driver level. When the Re-Mapping I/O Address is not permitted, the device must use the I/O Addresses assigned by the PCIe system at Boot-Up. If the software application expects the Parallel/Serial ports to use Legacy I/O address resources, it will not be possible to make it work with the Parallel/Serial ports of PCIe based devices on Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/7/8 platforms. On DOS platform, MCS99xx can remap the I/O addresses of the Parallel/Serial ports to desired values by running MCS99xx DOS utility. However, on Windows 95/98/ME platforms, you can only remap the I/O addresses of the Serial ports (but not Parallel port).

I have been given a Universal Willem EPROM Programmer, but discovered the issue above, searching the web found a workaround
http://www.downtowndougbrown.com/2010/10/sivava-willem-eprom-programmer-on-windows-7-64-bit/

http://www.benryves.com/products/remappediodll

although modern machines, devices uses USB, there are other available solid legacy devices around, so for everyone wanting to keep using them i suggest a new MB with LPT and COM present inside it will save a lot of time wasted for looking for workaround.

http://uk.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4595#sp

http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1150/H81PLUS/#specifications
The motherboards above are just for examples ,you can get different one

and Dave’s board seems to have COM header seen in this video


 One can always use an old PC with LPT and COM , but if space is an issue, a new MB with LPT & COM port headers available will be a bonus, best for both worlds.

[Andreas]

thanks for sharing
this will probably save my Galep 4 for the next years.

With best regards

Andreas
 

[David_AVD]

The on-board COM port on my (2 year old?) motherboard says it uses 03F8 - 03FF for the I/O range.  It can be changed to start at 02F8, 02E8 or 03E8 as well in device manager supposedly.

[digsys]

I still use new M/Bs with legacy COM and / or LPT on them, but they are getting harder to find. There is a chipset out there that is
compatible with the PCIe bus - I designed a plug-n board once, but never got it printed. Some of the 3rd party PCIe plug-in suppliers
swear they have software that you can d/l to re-map, but several emails later I gave up on them. I still have heaps of software that
I use and wrote that talk directly to legacy ports, so I'll still be using them.
Andreas - I upgraded to the Galep5 after I got tired of looking for M/B with a lower than 500MHz CPU for my ALL-07 system, which
is LPT driven. Damn thing cost $1,000s with all the adapters, now I can't give it away :-)

[amyk]

I doubt they'll be going away anytime soon, although the ports may not be present on all mobos. Oddly enough it's usually the lower-end models that have them, and the high-end, more expensive ones with all the other features don't, despite the SuperI/O chip already containing all the logic; they just decided to save a few cents omitting the traces and headers

The standard peripherals you get on one are usually a parallel port, 2 serial ports, a floppy controller, PWMs for fans, ADCs (temperature sensors), and some GPIOs.

On the other hand since all the SuperI/O chips I've seen have been QFP, it wouldn't be too hard to solder to the pins and bring out those ports that were left unimplemented. They're either disabled via strapping options or in the BIOS, either way not that difficult to re-enable again. (Maybe you could make use of those GPIOs too; built-in AVR/PIC/etc. programmer? )

[free_electron]

To clarify : i am talki g about hardware remapping here ! not software gimmicks that watch for access to one address and clone to a other address.

On PCI express it will not work. Remapping is impossible. In standard pci it will work. The solution is to buy a motherboard that still has a standard PCI connector and use a plugin board.

The parallel pci can access the old isa addressrange.

Pci express, due to its serial nature cannot. Here is why:
You leave the cpu with a number of pci express (serial) lanes. Each lane gets a block of addresses. These do not necessarily overlap ! Meaning, if lane 1 gets the lowest 1megabyte the others lanes cannot go there !(some combinations are possible, but not all)

Since there is one lane already tied up to the legacy pci (parallel controller) only that lane has access to the old isa address range. Any other PCI express card sits on a different lane and has no access to the correct address area.

only the pci express lane feeding the parallel pci interface has access to the correct address range. and since parallel pci has access of isa range only there will you find 378 and 278.

Another solution is to tap into the LPC bus and adding a simple io controller there. There are chips that have lpt , 2 serial, mouse, keyboard, irda, floppy and two ide controllers that have an LPC interface. The LPC interface is only 7 wires.

Some motherboards bring the interface out on a connector as it is also used to hook up the TPM (trusted platform module)

[raymond2000]

The parallel pci can access the old isa addressrange.

this PCI card could be a quick fix
http://www.sunix.com.tw/sppd.php?cid=1&kid=16&gid=63&pid=69#features

Thank you "free_electron" for the great info

[ivan747]

I'm wondering about this. Is it possible to have a virtual machine with Windows 98 or 3.1 and a PCI serial or parallel port card readdressed by the virtual machine? It seems a much cleaner solution.

[Tooms]

I'm wondering about this. Is it possible to have a virtual machine with Windows 98 or 3.1 and a PCI serial or parallel port card readdressed by the virtual machine? It seems a much cleaner solution.

I am using it alot and it is working fine, i have Windows XP inside an VM with VMware workstation and have the real com port connected to the VM.

Another way it to use an serial port server where you install an virtual serial port driver in the VM and it is connection the serial port server over the network, the application thinks it is a real com port with direct connection to the device.
http://www.moxa.com/product/Serial_Device_Servers.htm

I have used it some times to connect older home automation systems to an PC over the network.
http://www.tooms.dk/articles_tutorials/ihc_serialportserver/default.asp


Tooms

[Andreas]

Hello,

finally after my newest PC had crashed with south bridge overheating 3 weeks ago I have bought a new system with a Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H board.

There is no LPT / COM connector at the backside. But there is still one COM and one LPT header on the board.
So with a flat cable + slot bracked from a older expansion card I have now 1 serial and 1 parallel port.
My HP LaserJet 4L is working fine.
The Galep 4 is still not runnig because I made the fault of installing a 64Bit version of Win 7 which is not supported by the Galep 4 software. So I'm still looking for a solution.

With best regards

Andreas

[SeanB]

Virtualbox with a legit copy of XP installed in it and allowed to acess the ports will work there. That is how I run a TL866 programmer under Linux.

[GK]

I've got an FPGA "Nanoboard" at work that Altium virtually threw at us as a freebie a couple of years ago, as if they were desperate to get everyone working with FPGA's. Decided to pull it out of the box and put it to use the other week. Dang! No more parallel ports on our current PC's. Parallel ports! What the hell were Altium thinking? It's not like this thing is 15 years old.

 

[amyk]

In my experience Gigabyte have some very weird port configurations on their mobos wrt. the "legacy "connectors - it's like they think "we have some space left over, what fits?" They have models with 2 serial ports and a floppy but not parallel, 1 floppy and 1 parallel but not serial, etc. There's still ones with the parallel port on the back panel!

There are chips that have lpt , 2 serial, mouse, keyboard, irda, floppy and two ide controllers that have an LPC interface.

All mobos use these SuperIOs, and most if not all of them have the complete set of ports, but the irritating thing is that they're not all broken out, so it's effectively hardware that's present but unusable. Maybe they couldn't be bothered with routing the traces, but as far as I'm concerned, the more options the better. I wish some manufacturer would make a "full featured" board that had the full set of ports.

[SeanB]

Worse is they have them with a connector, but use a connector that noone stocks and which is an odd size so you can not even make your own breakout.