lpt0 always busy

[stanley jobson]

hi,
i am now trying for weeks to get my lpt0 working without any success :(

i always get "device busy" (running lptcontrol, lptest,
open(/dev/lpt0)).  i found a lot of questions about this via google and
some hints too (e.g. excluding device ppi from kernel) but all this
didnt help :(

i should mention that my printer connected to lpt0 is a funny gdi
printer which only works under win98. so my idea was to use qemu to run
a emulated win98 to get my printer working - but therefore qemu needs to
be able to open /dev/lpt0 ...

finally i wrote a simple c prog which just calls open(/dev/lpt0) but it
also always fails with device busy :(

what are the requirements to successfully open lpt0 port (apart from
having connected a printer to it) ?

does fbsd expects a response from the printer (e.g. ready status)? maybe
my printer is not able to do this ... if so: what are possible
workarounds? could i convice the kernel that lpt0 is ready?

thx
regards,
stan

ps: i am running fbsd 5.4