Yes as the OS technology keeps developing, direct access to hardware peripherals is routed through the so called device drivers- this is just to make sure that the OS at all times is aware of what is happening to the ports and other peripherals. You simply cannot "mov" a byte to the LPT without the OS knowing about it.

On the net the following few links can be useful :

www.codeguru.com/vb/articles
www.freevbcode.com
www.a1vbcode.com
www.vbfreeware.com
www.allapi.net/agnet/appdown.htm

Out of the above, the last link is a good compilation of all the Windows API calls neatly categorized with examples etc. Just check out the categoory Printers in the tree view and you have all API calls to handle a printer. Could be useful.

Raghu