Re: [PARPORT] ECP not detected on Acer 737TLV Notebook

From: Dave Strauss (D.Strauss@motorola.com)
Date: Tue Oct 08 2002 - 10:48:01 EDT

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    On Tue, 08 Oct 2002 11:51:21 +0100, Shaun<shaun@traderman.co.uk> wrote:
    >
    > Hi
    >
    > I have been trying to get redhat 7.2 to recognise my parport in ECP mode
    > so that I can run some dongle enabled software under VMWare. For this I
    > need VMWare to have a bidirectional parallel port.
    >
    > The port is recognised by linux but the only mode available is PCSPP
    >
    > The bios supports standard, bi-directional,ECP and EPP but all of these
    > give the same result.
    >
    > I have tried the suggested workaround from the people.redhat site for
    > VMWare and I have upgraded to VMWare 3.2 but this makes no difference.
    >
    > Shaun Coughlin
    >

    RedHat 7.2 is shipped with ECP support turned off. To turn it on, you
    need to (at a minimum) rebuild and install the parport_pc.o module
    with CONFIG_PARPORT_PC_FIFO enabled (CONFIG_PARPORT_PC_FIFO=y in the
    config). Then you also have to put the magic incantation into
    /etc/modules.conf to tell the module to use ECP mode and the FIFO.
    Usually the easiest way to do this is the following (as root):

        cd /usr/src/linux-2.4
        cp configs/<whatever the appropriate config for your system is> .config
        make xconfig
          click on "Parallel port support"
          set "Use FIFO/DMA if available (EXPERIMENTAL)" to "y"
          click on "Main Menu"
          click on "Save and Exit"
        make dep
        make bzImage
        make modules

    *Don't* do "make install" or "make modules-install" unless you really
    want to install your newly built kernel and/or modules. Instead, you
    can just replace the one module you're really interested in:

        cd /lib/modules/<your kernel version number>/kernel/drivers/parport
        mv parport_pc.o parport_pc.o.orig
        cp -p /usr/src/linux-2.4/drivers/parport/parport_pc.o parport_pc.o.new
        cp -p parport_pc.o.new parport_pc.o

    [ Note that this preserves the original parport_pc.o modules in case you don't
      like the new one ]

    Then add the following to /etc/modules.conf:

    options parport_pc irq=auto dma=auto (this line if you want to use DMA)
    options parport_pc irq=auto dma=none (this line if you don't want to use DMA)
      
    Then unload your parport-related modules so the new one will load next
    time you try to use it:

      rmmod lp parport_pc parport

    But then as Tim Waugh notes you don't need ECP mode to have a bidirectional
    port.

    -- Dave Strauss

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