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PARIDE v1.03 (c) 1997-8 Grant Guenther <grant@torque.net>

The package provides the installation files for FTDI USB Serial Port Driver version 2.12.26. If the driver is already installed on your system, updating (overwrite-installing) may fix various issues, add new functions, or just upgrade to the available version. To check that the CH340 enumerates to a COM port, you can open the device manager. You can click the Start or ⊞ (Windows) button and type ' device manager to quickly search for the application. Using the search on Windows 10 to look for the device manager. In Internet Explorer, click Tools, and then click Internet Options. On the Security tab, click the Trusted Sites icon. Click Sites and then add these website addresses one at a time to the list: You can only add one address at a time and you must click Add after each one. . Open the Device Manager by right clicking “My computer” and selecting control panel. Look under Ports (COM & LPT). You should see an open port named 'USB Serial Port' Right click on the 'USB Serial Port' and choose the 'Update Driver Software' option. Next, choose the 'Browse my computer for Driver software' option.

1. Introduction¶

Owing to the simplicity and near universality of the parallel port interfaceto personal computers, many external devices such as portable hard-disk,CD-ROM, LS-120 and tape drives use the parallel port to connect to theirhost computer. While some devices (notably scanners) use ad-hoc methodsto pass commands and data through the parallel port interface, mostexternal devices are actually identical to an internal model, but witha parallel-port adapter chip added in. Some of the original parallel portadapters were little more than mechanisms for multiplexing a SCSI bus.(The Iomega PPA-3 adapter used in the ZIP drives is an example of thisapproach). Most current designs, however, take a different approach.The adapter chip reproduces a small ISA or IDE bus in the external deviceand the communication protocol provides operations for reading and writingdevice registers, as well as data block transfer functions. Sometimes,the device being addressed via the parallel cable is a standard SCSIcontroller like an NCR 5380. The “ditto” family of external tapedrives use the ISA replicator to interface a floppy disk controller,which is then connected to a floppy-tape mechanism. The vast majorityof external parallel port devices, however, are now based on standardIDE type devices, which require no intermediate controller. If onewere to open up a parallel port CD-ROM drive, for instance, one wouldfind a standard ATAPI CD-ROM drive, a power supply, and a single adapterthat interconnected a standard PC parallel port cable and a standardIDE cable. It is usually possible to exchange the CD-ROM device withany other device using the IDE interface.

The document describes the support in Linux for parallel port IDEdevices. It does not cover parallel port SCSI devices, “ditto” tapedrives or scanners. Many different devices are supported by theparallel port IDE subsystem, including:

• MicroSolutions backpack CD-ROM
• MicroSolutions backpack PD/CD
• MicroSolutions backpack hard-drives
• MicroSolutions backpack 8000t tape drive
• SyQuest EZ-135, EZ-230 & SparQ drives
• Avatar Shark
• Imation Superdisk LS-120
• Maxell Superdisk LS-120
• FreeCom Power CD
• Hewlett-Packard 5GB and 8GB tape drives
• Hewlett-Packard 7100 and 7200 CD-RW drives

as well as most of the clone and no-name products on the market.

To support such a wide range of devices, PARIDE, the parallel port IDEsubsystem, is actually structured in three parts. There is a baseparide module which provides a registry and some common methods foraccessing the parallel ports. The second component is a set ofhigh-level drivers for each of the different types of supported devices:

(Currently, the pg driver is only used with CD-R drives).

The high-level drivers function according to the relevant standards.The third component of PARIDE is a set of low-level protocol driversfor each of the parallel port IDE adapter chips. Thanks to the interestand encouragement of Linux users from many parts of the world,support is available for almost all known adapter protocols:

2. Using the PARIDE subsystem¶

While configuring the Linux kernel, you may choose either to buildthe PARIDE drivers into your kernel, or to build them as modules.

In either case, you will need to select “Parallel port IDE device support”as well as at least one of the high-level drivers and at least oneof the parallel port communication protocols. If you do not knowwhat kind of parallel port adapter is used in your drive, you couldbegin by checking the file names and any text files on your DOSinstallation floppy. Alternatively, you can look at the markings onthe adapter chip itself. That’s usually sufficient to identify thecorrect device.

You can actually select all the protocol modules, and allow the PARIDEsubsystem to try them all for you.

For the “brand-name” products listed above, here are the protocoland high-level drivers that you would use:

2.1 Configuring built-in drivers¶

We recommend that you get to know how the drivers work and how toconfigure them as loadable modules, before attempting to compile akernel with the drivers built-in.

If you built all of your PARIDE support directly into your kernel,and you have just a single parallel port IDE device, your kernel shouldlocate it automatically for you. If you have more than one device,you may need to give some command line options to your bootloader(eg: LILO), how to do that is beyond the scope of this document.

The high-level drivers accept a number of command line parameters, allof which are documented in the source files in linux/drivers/block/paride.By default, each driver will automatically try all parallel ports itcan find, and all protocol types that have been installed, until it findsa parallel port IDE adapter. Once it finds one, the probe stops. So,if you have more than one device, you will need to tell the drivershow to identify them. This requires specifying the port address, theprotocol identification number and, for some devices, the drive’schain ID. While your system is booting, a number of messages aredisplayed on the console. Like all such messages, they can bereviewed with the ‘dmesg’ command. Among those messages will besome lines like:

The numbers will always be the same until you build a new kernel withdifferent protocol selections. You should note these numbers as youwill need them to identify the devices.

If you happen to be using a MicroSolutions backpack device, you willalso need to know the unit ID number for each drive. This is usuallythe last two digits of the drive’s serial number (but read MicroSolutions’documentation about this).

As an example, let’s assume that you have a MicroSolutions PD/CD drivewith unit ID number 36 connected to the parallel port at 0x378, a SyQuestEZ-135 connected to the chained port on the PD/CD drive and also anImation Superdisk connected to port 0x278. You could give the followingoptions on your boot command:

In the last option, pf.drive1 configures device /dev/pf1, the 0x378is the parallel port base address, the 0 is the protocol registrationnumber and 36 is the chain ID.

Please note: while PARIDE will work both with and without thePARPORT parallel port sharing system that is included by the“Parallel port support” option, PARPORT must be included and enabledif you want to use chains of devices on the same parallel port.

2.2 Loading and configuring PARIDE as modules¶

It is much faster and simpler to get to understand the PARIDE driversif you use them as loadable kernel modules.

Note 1:

using these drivers with the “kerneld” automatic module loadingsystem is not recommended for beginners, and is not documented here.

Note 2:

if you build PARPORT support as a loadable module, PARIDE mustalso be built as loadable modules, and PARPORT must be loaded beforethe PARIDE modules.

To use PARIDE, you must begin by:

this loads a base module which provides a registry for the protocols,among other tasks.

Then, load as many of the protocol modules as you think you might need.As you load each module, it will register the protocols that it supports,and print a log message to your kernel log file and your console. Forexample:

Finally, you can load high-level drivers for each kind of device thatyou have connected. By default, each driver will autoprobe for a singledevice, but you can support up to four similar devices by giving theirindividual coordinates when you load the driver.

For example, if you had two no-name CD-ROM drives both using theKingByte KBIC-951A adapter, one on port 0x378 and the other on 0x3bcyou could give the following command:

For most adapters, giving a port address and protocol number is sufficient,but check the source files in linux/drivers/block/paride for moreinformation. (Hopefully someone will write some man pages one day !).

As another example, here’s what happens when PARPORT is installed, anda SyQuest EZ-135 is attached to port 0x378:

Note that the last line is the output from the generic partition tablescanner - in this case it reports that it has found a disk with one partition.

2.3 Using a PARIDE device¶

Once the drivers have been loaded, you can access PARIDE devices in thesame way as their traditional counterparts. You will probably need tocreate the device “special files”. Here is a simple script that you cancut to a file and execute:

With the device files and drivers in place, you can access PARIDE deviceslike any other Linux device. For example, to mount a CD-ROM in pcd0, use:

If you have a fresh Avatar Shark cartridge, and the drive is pda, youmight do something like:

Devices like the Imation superdisk work in the same way, except thatthey do not have a partition table. For example to make a 120MBfloppy that you could share with a DOS system:

2.4 The pf driver¶

The pf driver is intended for use with parallel port ATAPI diskdevices. The most common devices in this category are PD drivesand LS-120 drives. Traditionally, media for these devices are notpartitioned. Consequently, the pf driver does not support partitionedmedia. This may be changed in a future version of the driver.

2.5 Using the pt driver¶

The pt driver for parallel port ATAPI tape drives is a minimal driver.It does not yet support many of the standard tape ioctl operations.For best performance, a block size of 32KB should be used. You willprobably want to set the parallel port delay to 0, if you can.

2.6 Using the pg driver¶

The pg driver can be used in conjunction with the cdrecord programto create CD-ROMs. Please get cdrecord version 1.6.1 or laterfrom ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/cdrecord/ . To record CD-R mediayour parallel port should ideally be set to EPP mode, and the “port delay”should be set to 0. With those settings it is possible to record at 2xspeed without any buffer underruns. If you cannot get the driver to workin EPP mode, try to use “bidirectional” or “PS/2” mode and 1x speeds only.

3. Troubleshooting¶

3.1 Use EPP mode if you can¶

The most common problems that people report with the PARIDE driversconcern the parallel port CMOS settings. At this time, none of thePARIDE protocol modules support ECP mode, or any ECP combination modes.If you are able to do so, please set your parallel port into EPP modeusing your CMOS setup procedure.

3.2 Check the port delay¶

Some parallel ports cannot reliably transfer data at full speed. Tooffset the errors, the PARIDE protocol modules introduce a “portdelay” between each access to the i/o ports. Each protocol setsa default value for this delay. In most cases, the user can overridethe default and set it to 0 - resulting in somewhat higher transferrates. In some rare cases (especially with older 486 systems) thedefault delays are not long enough. if you experience corrupt datatransfers, or unexpected failures, you may wish to increase theport delay. The delay can be programmed using the “driveN” parametersto each of the high-level drivers. Please see the notes above, orread the comments at the beginning of the driver source files inlinux/drivers/block/paride.

3.3 Some drives need a printer reset¶

There appear to be a number of “noname” external drives on the marketthat do not always power up correctly. We have noticed this with somedrives based on OnSpec and older Freecom adapters. In these rare cases,the adapter can often be reinitialised by issuing a “printer reset” onthe parallel port. As the reset operation is potentially disruptive inmultiple device environments, the PARIDE drivers will not do itautomatically. You can however, force a printer reset by doing:

If you have one of these marginal cases, you should probably buildyour paride drivers as modules, and arrange to do the printer resetbefore loading the PARIDE drivers.

Drivers Net Index Port Devices List

3.4 Use the verbose option and dmesg if you need help¶

While a lot of testing has gone into these drivers to make them workas smoothly as possible, problems will arise. If you do have problems,please check all the obvious things first: does the drive work inDOS with the manufacturer’s drivers ? If that doesn’t yield any usefulclues, then please make sure that only one drive is hooked to your system,and that either (a) PARPORT is enabled or (b) no other device driveris using your parallel port (check in /proc/ioports). Then, load theappropriate drivers (you can load several protocol modules if you want)as in:

(using the correct driver for the type of device you have, of course).The verbose=1 parameter will cause the drivers to log a trace of theiractivity as they attempt to locate your drive.

Use ‘dmesg’ to capture a log of all the PARIDE messages (any messagesbeginning with paride:, a protocol module’s name or a driver’s name) andinclude that with your bug report. You can submit a bug report in oneof two ways. Either send it directly to the author of the PARIDE suite,by e-mail to grant@torque.net, or join the linux-parport mailing listand post your report there.

3.5 For more information or help¶

You can join the linux-parport mailing list by sending a mail messageto:

with the single word:

in the body of the mail message (not in the subject line). Please besure that your mail program is correctly set up when you do this, asthe list manager is a robot that will subscribe you using the replyaddress in your mail headers. REMOVE any anti-spam gimmicks you mayhave in your mail headers, when sending mail to the list server.

You might also find some useful information on the linux-parportweb pages (although they are not always up to date) at

Drivers Net Index Port Devices Replicator

For most devices, the Ports device setup class and the Serial function driver provide the functionality required to operate serial ports and COM ports. To install serial ports and COM ports using these system-supplied components, do the following:

• Provide an INF file that specifies the Ports device setup class and the Serial function driver as the service for the port.

• To configure a serial port as COM port, comply with the requirements that are defined in Configuration of COM Ports.

For more information about installing serial ports and COM ports using the Ports device setup class and the Serial function driver, see the following topics:

Drivers Net Index Port Devices Online

If you do a custom installation of a COM port, you must comply with the COM port requirements that are defined in Configuration of COM Ports.