Updating remapped IO.DLL: The venerable Willem programmer still works on 64-bit Windows 10!

Sunday, 18th August 2019

A few years ago I posted about a way to get the Willem chip programmer to work with modern PCI parallel ports via a DLL that remapped the legacy port addresses to the ones of your modern card (in my case my card is installed at 0xCCD8 instead of 0x378). Since its release I've had several people contact me asking for advice and support, including a few questions about 64-bit support.

Until recently I had been using a 32-bit OS and as such hadn't run into compatibility issues myself. I had replaced the DLL in the zip archive for the project with an allegedly 64-bit-compatible version of the inpout32.dll library that the is used to access the I/O ports but I was unable to test this myself, however it still worked in a 32-bit OS so hoped that it would also work on a 64-bit OS as claimed.

I am now running a 64-bit OS and found myself needing to program a chip with my Willem programmer but was unable to do so, receiving the dreaded Hardware Error: Check Power & connection message. Clearly this DLL was not working as it should under 64-bit Windows!

Fortunately, Phil Gibbons of highrez.co.uk has come to the rescue with a 64-bit compatible version of InpOut32 that works perfectly on my 64-bit Windows 10 machine as a drop-in replacement for the old library. I have updated the zip archive containing the software with the working library. For more details and a copy of the Willem programming software please see the Remapped IO.DLL project page.