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This project was easy in concept, but it did
take some work. Of course there's a lot of soldering, but by far the trickiest part
was interfacing the parallel port with Windows XP. After searching extensively
for a good driver, I highly recommend using NTPort by Zealsoft. It also works for other versions
of Windows, and provides replacements for the old Outp and Inp functions. I used the plans from BeyondLogic, but of course there are lots of similar plans on the web. I was quite surprised to find that this actually works without the battery. The parallel port can provide enough current on its own, but just barely enough to make out the letters. A logical next step in this project would be to add the ability to edit the text on the fly, but instead I think I'll work on interfacing it to a 6800 microcontroller!
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