HP ProLiant N40L microserver PCIe Parallel ports card and drivers

[n40l_owner]

I have an HP ProLiant N40L microserver with the latest version of ESXi 5 on it.  One of the Windows XP VM’s I will be running needs to access an old parallel port security dongle so my question is, are there any PCIe parallel port cards I can fit that have ESXi drivers?

Thanks for your help

[zXi_Gamer]

parallel port security dongle  are legacy products and usually do not require drivers. Have you tried giving a parallel port to your VM and pointing it to the device on the server??

[n40l_owner]

Thank you for your reply,

I have actually tried plugging in a parallel port card made by StarTech but when I create a new VM there is no parallel port device I can add in the Virtual Machine Settings panel.  I have turned on the virtualise setting in the BIOS but ESXi still does not show a Parallel port device. I assumed that ESXi would need some driver that it didn't have to detect the card but maybe it is a setting I have to make?

Any help would be appreciated

Thanks

Steve

[OzerS]

Does this server has parallel port on it?

I know u used a card but add-on card might not work very well. And it looks like this server doesnt support Direct Path I/O to pass the card either.

Try locating a USB to Parallel device maybe it will work better.

[n40l_owner]

Hi OzerS

No unfortunately the server doesn't have a built in Parallel port. I have heard that USB to parallel converters don't work for Dongles just for old printers as the Dongle software writes directly to the I/O memory.  I think you are correct, the direct path I/O doesn't seem to be supported or at least that is what ESXi tells me when I look at the configuration page.  

Thanks for your help