**Follow this guide at your own risk!** **I am not responsible for any mistakes, explosions, dead film recorders, or anything else!**
That said, I have done my best to ensure this guide is as accurate as possible, and these instructions did work for me! (if I did make a mistake though, please [contact me](https://nycto.io/contact), and I'll fix it!) However, I will not provide any support, so be warned! ### 1: BIOS Setup Go into the BIOS or UEFI of your chosen server, and find the setting for "Parallel Port Mode". For my board, that was under Advanced > Super IO Configuration. [](https://guides.nycto.io/uploads/images/gallery/2025-02/JjcivQATM8CDCm5Q-bios.jpg) Make sure the parallel port is enabled, and that it's in ECP+EPP mode. The version of this mode doesn't really matter! (mine has 1.9 and 1.7) Then, save and reboot into Proxmox. ### 2: Proxmox Setup Open an SSH connection to your Proxmox host (not to a VM!), and login as root. Then, check that Proxmox can see your parallel port with the following command ```bash dmesg | grep parport ``` That should return something like this. [](https://guides.nycto.io/uploads/images/gallery/2025-02/FGLrT3dVsMmzIL22-image.png) If it doesn't, double check your BIOS settings then try again. Next, use this command to enable Proxmox' parallel port kernel module, *ppdev*. ```bash modprobe ppdev ``` To make sure that it's enabled, run ```bash ls -la /dev/parport* ``` You should now see something like this :) [](https://guides.nycto.io/uploads/images/gallery/2025-02/x5i59npAswwdNNHo-image.png) Now you'll need to make sure that module is loaded at every boot, by adding it to */etc/modules*. Open */etc/modules* in your favourite text editor (I used nano), then add *ppdev* on a new line. ```bash nano /etc/modules ``` [](https://guides.nycto.io/uploads/images/gallery/2025-02/JGienlEAJBjHUO9s-image.png) Save (ctrl+O in nano), exit (ctrl+X), and reboot your Proxmox host. ```bash reboot now ``` Finally, to make double sure that it's enabled on boot, run this again after Proxmox has rebooted ```bash ls -la /dev/parport* ``` You should see exactly the same output as the first time you ran it :) If so, you're now ready to pass it through to a VM! ### 3: VM Setup To pass the port through to a virtual machine, just run this ```bash qm set 100 -parallel /dev/parport0 ```Replace 100 with the ID of your virtual machine!
Make sure the VM isn't running!
I've only tested this with i440fx/SeaBIOS type VMs, but it'll probably work with q35 too. Now start/restart your chosen VM, and check to see if the port is available. [](https://guides.nycto.io/uploads/images/gallery/2025-02/Ihrfx95ZicIF9dGH-image.png) and that's it, you are now ready to print like it's 1995! Also, if you're interested, I'll be doing a full project post soon about getting my film recorder running, so keep your eyes peeled over at [nycto.io](https://nycto.io)! Happy printing! (or film recording!)