>Is there anything that will tell me what is actually done at the parallel port when I send out something like
>?? CHR(27)
>
>I'm thinking that I need some way of controlling the port directly for both send and receive of data bits.

You can probably do this using the low-level I/O API; I haven't been terribly successful using the native VFP LLF implementations, but using the Win32 API calls or the corresponding C implementations should work well, or look at _inp and _out in the MSDN for more details on direct addressing of I/O ports. This is compatible with Win95, but not NT. It relies on polled I/O, so it eats the processor for lunch.

>
>Thanks
>
>>>Try:
>>>
>>>SET PRINTER TO LPTx
>>>SET DEVICE TO PRINTER
>>>
>>>And use @...SAY commands to send data to printer.
>>>
>>Hi Vlad,
>>
>>Actually, I believe you will have to use the ?? operator to send escape codes to a printer, i.e.
>>
>>SET PRINTER ON
>>SET PRINTER TO LPTx
>>?? CHR(27) + CHR(XX) + CHR(YY)
>>
>>Used to work in DOS, anyway.
>>
>>regards,
>>
>>jim