PortIO

I recently had the opportunity to use PortIO and I must say, it is an incredibly useful Python wrapper for the port I/O macros like outb, inb and others that are provided by the C library. This module is perfect for those moments when a general purpose port I/O at the low level is required. However, if you are a programmer looking to perform I/O on the parallel port at a higher level, you would be better suited by the pyParallel module.

PortIO was inspired by a similar module - Ioport - and it is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), so it's free to download and use. In terms of usage, the sample program that comes with PortIO is straightforward and demonstrates how to toggle on and off all the data lines of the parallel port lp0 with a 6 seconds period.

It's worth noting that before the call to ioperm, the sample program checks for root privileges to acquire the proper I/O permissions for the involved ports. If you're like me and you've ever forgotten to do this before, you'll certainly appreciate the reminder.

Overall, PortIO is a great addition to any developer's toolkit if you're looking to perform I/O on Linux x86 platforms. It's easy to use and it gets the job done with minimal fuss.