Are there cheap B360 or H370 motherboards with Parallel port present?

[psaez84]

Hi

Are there cheap B360 or H370 motherboards with Parallel port present? Also, will be necessary to have VGA and HDMI port.

Thank you

 

[stdragon]

Hopefully others have an answer, but I couldn't find one with the parallel port build-in. It's regarded as a legacy port. That said however, you can install a card into the PCIe slot that provides this function. One such example in the link below.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815166031&cm_re=parallel_port-_-15-166-031-_-Product

There are plenty of other brands too.

 

[psaez84]

Hopefully others have an answer, but I couldn't find one with the parallel port build-in. It's regarded as a legacy port. That said however, you can install a card into the PCIe slot that provides this function. One such example in the link below.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815166031&cm_re=parallel_port-_-15-166-031-_-Product

There are plenty of other brands too.

an older MSDOS program will work with this parallel port?

 

[DRagor]

Not even that. There are many boards that have Parallel header, all that is needed is a bracket like that https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-Profile-16-Inch-Parallel-PLATE25F16LP/dp/B009JXK5UE/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1525903285&sr=1-3&keywords=parallel+port+bracket
For example Gigabyte B360 HD3P has such port header.

 

[Alabalcho]

Why you're crippling a modern motherboard, with tons of RAM and storage, with MS-DOS which is limited to couple of megabytes of RAM, and 2GB hard drives?

May be there's better industrial type motherboard more suitable for your application.

 

[stdragon]

MSDOS compatibility? You know, that's a very good question; I honestly don't know. I want to say between "maybe" and "yes" given the card supports Wink2. So I'm guessing it's addressed via legacy BIOS resources all the same.

If the MB supports it, get the cheaper header adapter as mention before. I like that idea better. Also less chance of a hardware resource conflict.

If you absolutely must use DOS, check into FreeDOS. It's over 20 years old and was last updated in 2016. I'm think FreeDOS might be better as it has far better support for modern hardware than say MSDOS v6.22

 

[psaez84]

Not even that. There are many boards that have Parallel header, all that is needed is a bracket like that https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-Profile-16-Inch-Parallel-PLATE25F16LP/dp/B009JXK5UE/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1525903285&sr=1-3&keywords=parallel+port+bracket
For example Gigabyte B360 HD3P has such port header.

an older MSDOS program will work? is using that port header exactly the same as using a real parallel port? if so, then, why when you have a real parallel port it is detected by windows (as LPT1 in ports section of device admin) and if your motherboard only have the port header is not detected by windows?

 

[stdragon]

Header or not, if Windows doesn't detect an LTP port (parallel port), then either it's turned off in BIOS, or the MB doesn't have it built in, and thus no header connector would be available.

When in doubt, always check the MB manual online direct from the vendors website (ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock, etc). It's going to be in PDF format.

 

[DRagor]

Not even that. There are many boards that have Parallel header, all that is needed is a bracket like that https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-Profile-16-Inch-Parallel-PLATE25F16LP/dp/B009JXK5UE/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1525903285&sr=1-3&keywords=parallel+port+bracket
For example Gigabyte B360 HD3P has such port header.

an older MSDOS program will work? is using that port header exactly the same as using a real parallel port? if so, then, why when you have a real parallel port it is detected by windows (as LPT1 in ports section of device admin) and if your motherboard only have the port header is not detected by windows?

It is detected and shown in Windows Device Manager, except as long as nothing is connected to header, it is under hidden devices, with Code 45 listed in driver's details. Also as mentioned by stdragon, such ports are often disabled in BIOS as default state.

 

[psaez84]

Not even that. There are many boards that have Parallel header, all that is needed is a bracket like that https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-Profile-16-Inch-Parallel-PLATE25F16LP/dp/B009JXK5UE/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1525903285&sr=1-3&keywords=parallel+port+bracket
For example Gigabyte B360 HD3P has such port header.

an older MSDOS program will work? is using that port header exactly the same as using a real parallel port? if so, then, why when you have a real parallel port it is detected by windows (as LPT1 in ports section of device admin) and if your motherboard only have the port header is not detected by windows?

It is detected and shown in Windows Device Manager, except as long as nothing is connected to header, it is under hidden devices, with Code 45 listed in driver's details. Also as mentioned by stdragon, such ports are often disabled in BIOS as default state.

very interesting! thanks!

MSDOS compatibility? You know, that's a very good question; I honestly don't know. I want to say between "maybe" and "yes" given the card supports Wink2. So I'm guessing it's addressed via legacy BIOS resources all the same.

If the MB supports it, get the cheaper header adapter as mention before. I like that idea better. Also less chance of a hardware resource conflict.

If you absolutely must use DOS, check into FreeDOS. It's over 20 years old and was last updated in 2016. I'm think FreeDOS might be better as it has far better support for modern hardware than say MSDOS v6.22

mmmm thats a nice idea. Do you think that FreeDOS with virtualbox will be able to use the LPT1 port of the computer?

 

[stdragon]

mmmm thats a nice idea. Do you think that FreeDOS with virtualbox will be able to use the LPT1 port of the computer?

FreeDOS has been optimized to for virtualization over the years of development; at least far and away more so than MSDOS (because virtualization didn't even exist at that time)

In theory, yes. If the parallel port is available to the host, then a Type-2 hypervisor such as Virtualbox should be able to enumerate and pass traffic from the VM to the port. I know that in VMware Workstation Player, you can add a parallel port to the VM hardware settings and then map to specific port if need (defaults to autoconfig)

TLDR: Just click on this tutorial link on getting FreeDOS up and running with Virtualbox. Then give it a go and see how it works for you.

http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/VirtualBox