It might be better, to break a question like this up, into separate
posts, as it makes it easier for people to answer.
*******
The answer to the first question, will depend on the relay program itself..
There would be a temptation, on an older OS like Win98, to "talk"
directly to the parallel port. Later OSes don't allow that, and
some kind of driver and software interface, act as intermediaries.
A program that needed to move from one OS to another, would need
to be talking to that kind of driver.
For example, I have some CAD software, and as part of its installation,
it installs a parallel port driver. That is how it "punches through"
the protection model of newer OSes. In the past, it would not have
used a parallel port driver, and instead, when you went to use the
CAD software, it would have talked to the parallel port directly
at a well known I/O space address.
Also, while you can buy USB to printer adapter cables, they only
support printing features, and not general purpose I/O such as
the relay box might have been using. (It looks like a parallel
port physically, but not all protocols are supported at the
driver level. Only printing is supported.) If the new computer
doesn't have a parallel port on it, in the I/O plate area, you
could try a PCI parallel port card. But you're also going to
have that software issue, where the original control program
will be stopped dead in its tracks, when it attempts to talk to
I/O address 0x3BC or whatever. A newer OS would probably report
some kind of "access violation", as soon as the relay program
tries to reach the parallel port on the PCI card.
If the relay product is a simple enough design, it might be
possible for you to use a general purpose I/O program with the
parallel port. The idea there would be, the GPIO program would
be kept up to date for the latest driver model, so could punch
through the protection model. The idea would be, you'd need to
know which bit of the parallel port, controlled a relay, and
what sequence of events was needed to trigger it. So it is possible
you could use a third party piece of software to control the
relay box. Note - this only works, if there is a relatively
simple mapping from parallel port to hardware. The relay control
could have a very complicated "key sequence", to prevent accidental
triggering or the like. A software like this, is only suitable
for the most naive kind of hardware implementation, where a bit
on the parallel port, directly controls a relay channel. If the
relay control has more than eight channels, then it likely has
a more complicated control method, not suitable for single
bit twiddles. It would have to be a cheesy, hobbyist style,
one-to-one mapped relay controller, to easily be controlled
by this.
http://download.cnet.com/Lalim-Parallel-Port-Control-Basic/3000-2085_...
*******
The v40xi is USB based, and software goes up to at least Win2K.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bpu04601&tmp_task....
HP offers something called a Universal Printer Driver, which may allow
you to sit on your Windows 7 box, and communicate with the other
machine which has the printer connected. This is purely a guess
on my part.
ttp://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?prodNameId=4157320&locale=en_US&taskId=135&prodTypeId=18972&prodSeriesId=503548
There may be some threads around, about enabling networking
between the OSes. This is for WinXP and Win98, but it's possible
the same kind of technical issues will exist with Windows 7.
http://www.theeldergeek.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=13489
*******
It wouldn't really matter who made the OSes - OSes spanning 12 years
are bound to be a bit cranky, when you attempt to interwork.
You could try controlling the Win98 machine remotely. I don't know
what the best and cheapest option would be. There are many kinds of
software available for that. I used to use software like that years
ago, but haven't used any of it lately. I used VNC and Timbuktu
on some of my older machines (mixed Mac/PC environment). Remote
control software would allow you to keep the Win98 box running,
leave the screen turned off, and just drive it from the Win7 box.
As long as you could get file sharing working for example, you
could run the All-in-One from the Win98 machine, and transfer the
files needed using file sharing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_desktop_software
Paul
