Oh, also i only have 9 pin serial ports not 25 pin. I have no idea what the circut that Pfluming gave me the link to does.
parallel is easier than you think... ive just written a program to turn data pins on and off and it really aint that complex. Im a very in experienced c programmer and it seems to have come out alright. You can even run it on the same port as an lcd (as long as its a hd44780 controller) http://lcdproc.sourceforge.net/docs/0.4.4-docs-html/drivers.html looks for the lcdtime bit, i can post code if needed... Info on wiring up the outputs is in http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/linux/system/status/lcdtime-0.2.tar.gz
