I definitely remember the difference but other than the various high speed modes (EPP and EPC, from what I recall) parallel ports worked for their intended purp

I definitely remember the difference but other than the various high speed modes (EPP and EPC, from what I recall) parallel ports worked for their intended purpose. I mentioned RS232 serial because that was a true "cluster f**" with the issues I enumerated and more. VGA was fun too. I remember early Linux documentation materials warning users that the wrong scanline modes for X could fry the hardware. Not sure if that was an actual occurrence but I remember triple checking just to make sure :).