One way to make (possibly) any parallel adapter card work

Post any questions about our parallel port products
Post Reply
enzo88
Newbie
Posts: 0
Joined: Tue Aug 18, 2020 9:35 pm

One way to make (possibly) any parallel adapter card work

Post by enzo88 »

Hello,
I have an old ADC-212 which would work perfectly for my needs - but couldn't use since no modern pci-e parallel adapter seems to work on modern fast 64 bit os/computers.
So, it all started recently when I installed a generic parallel pcie adapter in a Windows 10 computer (64 bit) just to try, but obviously that was a no go - Picoscope would not recognize the ADC-212.
Since I have WMware Workstation 15 on my machine, I tried installing an old 32 bit Windows 7, activated the virtual parallel port (which automatically connects to the physical one but exposes the correct port address for LPT1-0x378) and - lo and behold - my ADC-212 is back to life!!
Everything works perfectly in the virtual machine in Picoscope 5.21.2 with the ADC-212 connected to the pcie parallel adaptor card. So now I have a working solution without time limits, since I can copy the virtual machine to any future system.
I even tried a different pcie parallel card adaptor, and that works too.

Thought this might be helpful for owners of old parallel pico scopes still looking for a solution.

Gerry
PICO STAFF
PICO STAFF
Posts: 1145
Joined: Mon Aug 11, 2014 11:14 am

Re: One way to make (possibly) any parallel adapter card work

Post by Gerry »

Hi Enzo,

That's very interesting. I just assumed that the VM would pass through to the host, without being able to circumvent the issue that the host has in making the connection. I'm going to have a play with that kind of setup to see what's going on.

We get recurring requests of this type from customers on the help desk, so thanks for sharing :D .

Regards,

Gerry
Gerry
Technical Specialist

Post Reply