Paralell port mode: AT, PS2, EPP, ECP, DMA...?

Morning all, can anyone here tell which is the "preferred" mode to set your parallel port for best results?
My BIOS (Dell Optiplex 760) offers the following:

AT, PS/2, EPP, ECP no DMA, ECP DMA1, ECP DMA2

Ordinarily I'd assume ECP+DMA would be "best" but that's for data transfer, not accurately timed pulses, so can anyone point me the right way?

I think the best choice depends on what you are connecting to it.
For normal breakout board connections, I thing the best choice is usually the PS/2 (or Bidrictional, or SPP they are all the same) setting.

If you are using a Mesa card or Pico, then you have to use EPP.

That said many parallel port hardware implementations are slightly messed up. Which setting is chosen can (sometimes) make a difference in things such as which pins can be used as inputs or outputs and whether certain pins are pulled high or low (for example X-mode usually only works with the PS/2 setting). So try all and which ever works best for your hardware is the one to use. Of course they could all work equally well, and then it doesn't matter.

Hello Sir. Could you please provide some help on this post? I am kind of facing a similar issue but i dont know how to change the data transfer mode of my parallel port to support 9 input pins. forum.linuxcnc.org/38-general-linuxcnc-q...with-9-inputs#320147

sk_linuxcnc wrote:

Hello Sir. Could you please provide some help on this post? I am kind of facing a similar issue but i dont know how to change the data transfer mode of my parallel port to support 9 input pins. forum.linuxcnc.org/38-general-linuxcnc-q...with-9-inputs#320147

 

NOT ALL PARALLEL PORTS SUPPORT MODE X, YOU HAVE BEEN ADVISED TO READ THE DATA SHEET PERTAINING TO THE CHIP. THIS IS THE THIRD TIME I HAVE ADVISED YOU TO DO THIS. I think you will find that the pins concerned are not open collector pins.