I/O library

Hi all.

I'd like to use my laptop and software to control a robotics project. To do this, I'd like to be be able to set individual pins on my printer port (or other peripheral) to logic high or low at will, preferably with c++.

Is there an way to do this? I hope to avoid writing custom hardware drivers. I was hoping that someone here knows of a library which will enable me to easily do this.

Thanks a lot.

Assuming Windows on a PC...

You can try PortTalk from BeyondLogic.org. I've never tried it myself, but I do know that Windows prevents user mode programs from directly reading/writing to a hardware address. You can open a serial port like you open a file, but I don't know if this "trick" works with the parallel port. CreateFile()