>If you are indeed going to the parallel port and not the serial port you can use the ??? command to send strings to the device.
David,
for this type of lpt control, the printer spooler must be turned off.
Set "Print directly to printer" from Control Panel/Printers.
In this case, this "???" command produces message
"Error accessing printer spooler"
and will not work at all.
Andrus