I have been struggling to free up legacy I/O addresses commonly used for LPT ports (3BC, 378, 278) for my SUNIX PCI-based parallel port (PAR5008R+L) card. I specifically purchased this Dell OptiPlex 9020 minitower (built 20150724) with a parallel port for my new cognitive neuroscience laboratory at Bard College so that I could sync two computers for brainwave recordings over an addressable LPT port (via Matlab).
I've tried the 278, 378, & 3BC jumper settings on the parallel card. However, I can’t seem to get around a resource conflict using any of those addresses with a legacy ECP printer port install in device manager. Specifically, I get: LPT1 Code 12: I/O Range 0378-037A used by motherboard in Device Manager (Windows 7, 64-bit).
I have an PCI Express graphics card (GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 960, but I’ve also tried using another card—didn’t help). Nothing in the PCI Express x1 slot or other PCI Express x16 slot. I’ve looked at various device properties but can’t easily identify the overlapping range. I also couldn't find any relevant setting in the BIOS. I've since updated the BIOS off support.dell.com, but that didn't change the situation--at least I can't find anything that looks relevant.
Does anyone know if there's a firmware/BIOS update/jumper/some other setting that would allow me to get around any block to those unused addresses that might be reserved (but not visible) for some reason in the BIOS?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance,
Justin