Question LPT1 Printer Detection

[rkicklighter]

This is somewhat of a special application and question. Windows 10 Enterprise, industrial environment which requires a dot matrix printer attached to LPT1.

Printer is critical hardware as it prints a legal record of generated alarms.

I need a way to monitor that the printer is Online or Ready and return a true or false result.

In the past this has been accomplished via a voltage sensing relay attached to pins 15 and 18 of the DB25 connector, However Epson tells me this is no longer an option as those signals don't exist in the new systems.

Ideas?

Thanks!

 

[kanewolf]

This page -- https://computer.howstuffworks.com/parallel-port1.htm would say you could look at the voltage on pin 13 for the online status.