As part of several comments on the PIC 16C84 RA4 pin the following appeared:

  "Now if only IBM had kept all the input pins on the printer ports the same
polarity, I'd be walking on Cloud 9. Wake me up when the ride is over!"

  Do not blame IBM for that one.  That was Centronics' doing... and they are
long since gone.

And later in the fray:

  "... **BUT** some parallel ports, most notably Toshiba laptops, do NOT
support this."

  Blame Toshiba for that one! Try using Interlink (formerly Laplink) with
one of those Turkey's and look like a fool.

  Even a bad standard, is preferable to no standard.

Happy Holidays,
  Marv