Parallel port outputs in high!!!

[coinhunter]

Hello friends, I've been trying to asssemble my first CNC but unfortunately I've had some delays specially because of the computer, some months ago I bought some motors, drivers and the parallel port board from Kelling I assembled and tested them with a computer, they run perfectly, for some reason I got another computer but it doesn't work with the machine, the computer and its parallel port are OK, I've noticed that normally the parallel port pins from 2 to 9 give a low state signal but in my computers the outputs are in high state, I've tried to change some setting from bios that is changing spp standar, esp,or epp modes but it doesn't work, my computer is an old fashioned DELL but enough for my purpose, it has a pentium 4 and it runs windows xp (sp3 version), if you know something about my problem please help me.

[danilom]

Problem is if you port puts out only high state, normally you choose in Mach what is the active pin state, LOW or HIGH.
You can try this software to determine if your LPT port has malfunctioned as it allows you to control the state of pins
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/Lalim-Parallel-Port-Control-Pro.shtml
If you can change pin states then the problem is in mach or some configuration and computer should be ok.

[MetalHead]

Make sure the port in the computers CMOS setup is set to BI-Directional.