Ta guys
no onboard lpt or anything in the bios
problem is that the i/ o range at EE000-EE 007 is shown in the device manager (resources) is listed as unavailiable with a red no entry sign in the device manager. On trawling through the other devices this address is used by the Raedon graphics card
so I need to reassign one or the other.
the parallel card uses automatic set up and can't be altered , in the general tab it says it's working properlythe part to do any change is greyed out. Not keen on doing the graphics card, this is all a bit beyond me
I appreciate that mach 3 is looking at ox378, but the parallel card has no resources and as such there is no possibility of any communication

keep the suggestions comming. Thanks for your replies , I spent a lot on this setup and its complete junk at the moment!