>>I have a POS printer connect to LPT1 port in Win 98, VFP 5
>>Under spool settings,
>>[x] Print directly to the printer is selected
>>How to check printer ready status ( some bits in
>>lpt printer status port) from VFP ?
>
>This has been discussed here a number of time, with the conclusion always being that you can't determine the printer status beforehand in the Windows environment.

George,

What about this:

1. RUN a DOS command from VFP which executes
assembly INP command from LPT1 printer status port and stores
result into a file.

2. VFP programs reads a status byte from this file and determines
if printer is ready.

What do you think about it ?

I'm wondering why this cannot be done from Windows directly !?

Have you trieddirect port i/o from Windows, for example:

http://www.nease.net/~zealsoft/down.html
Vbio.dll for Windows 3.x/95(16K) CARDWARE

Vbio.dll for Windows 3.x/95 is intended to read and write PC I/O port in
Windows 3.x/95 application.
There are lots of people in newsgroup requesting similar
feature, so I decide to release Vbio.dll as the replacement of INP and OUTP. This DLL is very useful especially when you develop a hareware device and want to interface it in your Windows application. Visual Basic samples are included for 16bit and 32 bit. You can also use it in other languages, such as FoxPro/Visual FoxPro, Delphi, and so on.