Are there reliable pci parallel port cards? (not Mesa cards)

I know I know, dumb question, just bite bullet and get a Mesa 5125.

What I'm wondering is this:

Is there an known brand/supplier of inexpensive pci printer port cards that generally works well with linuxcnc?


*dons asbestos overcoat

Yes I'm seriously asking. I have friends & clients who want to get into LinuxCNC but either don't have a motherboard lpt, it's too slow, or they can't seem to find a pci card that works well in their pc. Nobody wants to spend $80 on a Mesa just starting out, so if there were say something from Newegg for $20-ish that usually worked there's a few dozen folks here in Austin that'd sure be happy to hear about it.


-
Riley

There are a couple I was looking around that had reviews that said it worked well for Linux cnc. There is a certain chipset that I though wasn't a good fit but I'm not sure.

My board had a legacy connector so I just ended up buying the ribbon cable with the db25 end

I believe that most parallel port cards can work with LInuxcnc for ordinary software stepping systems. The problem arises when you need to use one in EPP mode to communicate with specialized hardware like a Mesa card or Pico Systems setup. Then the port is used as a com bus rather than just twiddling register pins. That is when some cards non standard configuration bites you.

I've used some cards known to be problematic for software stepping without issue, or only minor problems.

the Newer Paralelport cards from the cowmen Manufacturers work great out of the Box
in Europa its the Delock series that worked great for me

just
in Terminal
dmesg | grep parpo*
you se the parport adresses
parport0: PC-style at 0x202d (0x201d), irq 7 [PCSPP,TRISTATE]

the 0x202d is the ADRESS of the port

Maybe this board can help you:

linuxcnc.org/docs/2.4/html/drivers_pluto_p.html#r1

www.knjn.com/FPGA-Parallel.html