parout is used to write out a value to the parallel port in Linux. Any value between 0 and 255 can be written. The purpose of this program is to facilitate controlling of any weird homebrew peripheral that might be connected to the port. Any parallel port can be written to.
Just uncompress, compile and install:
% tar zxf parout-1.0.tar.gz
% cd parout-1.0
% ./configure [--prefix=/where/to/install]
% make install
This application requires root permissions to access the port. You may want to setuid parout to root to allow normal users to execute it:
% su -c 'chmod 4755 /path/to/parout'
Usage is simple. You have a value you want to write out to a given parallel port. The value is given as a normal decimal value or a hexadecimal value. For the latter case the value must be prefixed by 0x. To write out a value to the default port 0x378 use this:
% parout value
To write to a given port add the port number in hexadecimal before the value.
% parout port value
Examples:
% parout 3
% parout 255
% parout 0x380 15
Download parout here below. The Debian package was made on a Debian testing machine.