To test some equipment which was controlled by the printer port on my PC, I wrote a simple test app. This is allows you to control the state of the data bits and control bits and also see the state of the status bits. It’s not very pretty and only does SPP port functions because that is all I needed for the job at hand. I wrote it in Python because I was looking for an excuse to learn wxPython.
Adam's Parallel Port Monitor
Now I am putting it on this blog so anyone else who finds it useful can have it.
To run this, you will need Python obviously, you will also need wxPython and also a DLL called inpout32.dll to allow port access under Windows.
Oh, and it only works in Windows. Sorry.
[...] UPDATE: I have made a simple demo app using this technique. You can download it from my commercial website at http://siliconsparrow.com/parallel-port-tester-in-python/. [...]