Despite the rise of ARM processors in more and more computers from embedded systems to daily driver PCs, the x86 architecture maintains a stronghold in the computing space that won’t be going away ...

It is a great shame that back in the days when a typical home computer had easy low-level hardware access that is absent from today’s machines, the cost of taking advantage of it was so high.

I have been working with computers since the late 70s, and that's not for boasting purposes, but to tell you where I come from. When I started, I was always told to NEVER plug/unplug the following ...

Q. I have several DOS programs that I still use, running under the DOS prompt in Windows 98. One of them provides printer output, but only to the parallel port. My printer is connected to a USB port.

So I'm trying to detect through Visual Basic 6.0 when a voltage change occurs on one of the pins of the serial/parallel port. The whole thing is pretty simple; no data transfer/handshaking/etc needs ...

The USB port is something most of us take for granted. You plug in a phone, keyboard, or one of the many useful USB gadgets out there, and it just works. But not too long ago, this was basically ...

For portable-sensing and data- acquisition applications, a laptop computer and its parallel port (LPT) make good bedfellows. Yet in the effort to extend battery life, many microprocessors and entire ...

John is a writer at Pocket-lint. He is passionate about all things technology, and is always keeping up with the latest smartphone and PC releases. John has previously written at MobileSyrup. When ...