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1.2. Printer Port Addresses

The Parallel Port has three commonly used base addresses. These are listed in table 2, below. The 3BCh base address was originally introduced used for Parallel Ports on early Video Cards. This address then disappeared for a while, when Parallel Ports were later removed from Video Cards. They has now reappeared as an option for Parallel Ports integrated onto motherboards, upon which their configuration can be changed using BIOS.

LPT1 is normally assigned base address 378h, while LPT2 is assigned 278h. However this may not always be the case as explained later. 378h & 278h have always been commonly used for Parallel Ports. The lower case h denotes that it is in hexadecimal. These addresses may change from machine to machine.

Table 2 Address Printer Port

When the computer is first turned on, BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) will determine the number of ports you have and assign device labels LPT1, LPT2 & LPT3 to them. BIOS first looks at address 3BCh. If a Parallel Port is found here, it is assigned as LPT1, then it searches at location 378h. If a Parallel card is found there, it is assigned the next free device label. This would be LPT1 if a card wasn't found at 3BCh or LPT2 if a card was found at 3BCh. The last port of call, is 278h and follows the same procedure than the other two ports. Therefore it is possible to have a LPT2 which is at 378h and not at the expected address 278h.

What can make this even confusing, is that some manufacturers of Parallel Port Cards, have jumpers which allow you to set your Port to LPT1, LPT2, LPT3. Now what address is LPT1? - On the majority of cards LPT1 is 378h, and LPT2, 278h, but some will use 3BCh as LPT1, 378h as LPT1 and 278h as LPT2. Life wasn't meant to be easy.

The assigned devices LPT1, LPT2 & LPT3 should not be a worry to people wishing to interface devices to their PC's. Most of the time the base address is used to interface the port rather than LPT1 etc. However should you want to find the address of LPT1 or any of the Line PrinTer Devices, you can use a lookup table provided by BIOS. When BIOS assigns addresses to your printer devices, it stores the address at specific locations in memory, so we can find them.

Table 3. Printer Port Start Address

Note 1 : Address 0000:040E in the BIOS Data Area may be used as the Extended Bios Data Area in PS/2 and newer Bioses.
The above table, table 3, shows the address at which we can find the Printer Port's addresses in the BIOS Data Area. Each address will take up 2 bytes. The following sample program in C, shows how you can read these locations to obtain the addresses of your printer ports.

#include <stdio.h>
           #include <dos.h>

void main(void)
{
 unsigned int far *ptraddr; /* Pointer to location of Port Addresses */
 unsigned int address; /* Address of Port */
 int a;

 ptraddr=(unsigned int far *)0x00000408;

 for (a = 0; a < 3; a++)
           {
           address = *ptraddr;
           if (address == 0)
           printf("No port found for LPT%d \n",a+1);
           else
           printf("Address assigned to LPT%d is %Xh\n",a+1,address);
           *ptraddr++;
           }
}

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Free Software
Delphi

Lesson 1
Delphi Programming
1.1. IDE Delphi
1.2. Component

Lesson 2
Printer Port / LPT
1.1.Basic
1.2.Address
1.3.Port Register
1.4.8 Bit Data Input
1.5.Test Circuitry
1.6.Assignment

Lesson 3
Printer Port / LPT
Experiments
3.1.LED
3.2.Swicht
3.3.Motor Stepper
3.4.DAC
3.5.ADC
3.6.Graph Display

Lesson 4
Serial Port
4.1.Basic
4.2.Hardware
4.3.Port Register

Lesson 5
Serial Port Experiments
5.1.LED
5.2.Stepper Motor
5.3.Swicht
5.4.ADC

Lesson 6
Game Port
Joy Stick
6.1. Basic
6.2. Experiments