We have a very, very antiquated system running some old software (from about the year 2000) that requires a parallel port dongle to validate the license. It seems that version 5.x of ESXi is no longer incorporating physical parallel port integration (read output) as was previously avaialble in versions ESXi v3.x & 4.x. (I've also confirmed this per page 131 of the ESXi user manual, "Note: If you are changing the parallel port on a virtual machine that runs on ESXi 4.1 or earlier host, you can send output to a physical parallel port on the host or to an output file on the host. This option is not available with ESXi 5.0 or later.") I can definitely understand shelving legacy type devices and support but, of all things, physical parallel port output?!
Before I found that little caveat, as quoted from the ESXi 5.0 user manual, I'd tried a USB-to-parallel adapter, a couple of cheap cards and even the only card I could find (per the forums) that was known to have worked (the Axxon AXLF616KB parallel port PCI card). Admittedly, though, that last card was from an ESXi v3.x posting in the forums...but I was pretty much desperate at this point, especially considering that, to replace this parallel port, dongle-driven software, would be about $9,000!
Is there simply no way to output to a physical parellel port with ESXi v5.x?