On  2 May 98 at 10:31, The Doc wrote:

> Has anyone had experience with the LPT cards with 4 ports on them?=A0=A0
> Supposedly you can configure them as LPT1-8, with a lot of configuration
> options.

  Note that this is going to require custom software support, and you
may not be able to do reliable bi-directional communications on ports
beyond LPT3.
  On the other hand, such a card might support ECP and EPP out of its
own resources rather than the motherboard's -- that would certainly
help.  But my guess would be that SCSI is probably a better option to
address this kind of need, unless you're trying to make a cheap
print-server.

  [The BIOS Data Area provides space to store the "base address" of
up to 4 printer ports, and anything that wants to talk directly to
the hardware will look here for them.  But the space that would have
held LPT4's address got taken over by something else -- NetWare, I
think -- and so only LPT1-LPT3 can be reliably reached this way.]

David G