> I attached a potentiometer between the base and +5 and turned it > until the relay just activated, then backed it off and tried toggling > the nStrobe line. At that point I was able to control the relay from > the PC port, but removing the pot and measuring its value showed > that it was 203Ohms. Not K Ohms; Ohms. That ain't going to cut it That doesn't sound right. You might expect a current gain of 100 from the transistor. It needs to pass about 75mA for the relay to pull in, => about 0.75mA into the base. Your experiment suggests more like 25mA is need (for some reason), which you won't get from a parallel port pin. The 4k7 pullup would supply 1mA -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist