You may find it easier to use the serial port to interface to the micro especially if you want to write some software on the PC side of things. If you are new to this kind of thing maybe try BASCOM to write your program for the 8051 as it should be pretty easy to do what you require.

To view the data from the 8051 you could use HYPERTERMINAL or some other comms package to view the information. If you use the parallel port you would have to write your own application to manipulate the parallel port.

That's my humble suggestion for the day!