Yes. Sort of. It is quite easy to bit bang the pins of the parallel port. The reason I say sort of is your desire to power something. It depends on how much power you are trying to pull. I think you can get away with small power needs but power hogs are another matter.
KitsRUs.com sells a
PC Data Acquistion Kit (available
here) that I have used with good success.
Even if you don't want to use the kit (and you probably don't have to), it has a
manual that shows a BASIC program that demonstrates how to access the various data & control signals of the parallel port.
The code is a bit criptic but if you are clever and know a bit about HEX you can noodle through it.
Quote:
a typical code example - line numbers are for reference
1. PORT = &H378
2. PE = 32
3. OUT PORT, &H00
4. OUT PORT, &H02
5. OUT PORT, &H00
6. OUT PORT, &H01
7. BITS = 0
8. X = INP (PORT+1) AND PE
9. IF X = PE THEN BITS = 128
10. FOR I% = 6 TO 0 STEP -1
11. OUT BASE, &H03
12. OUT BASE, &H01
13. X = INP (PORT+1) AND PE
14. IF X = PE THEN BITS = BITS + (2 ^ I%)
15. NEXT I%
16. PRINT BITS
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Another nice thing about the manual is that it gives all the secret handshakes to get things to works (address of the various registers, etc.)
Good luck.
Joe J.