This module controls a linear actuator through the parallel port. D0 (pin 2) is used as a "rotate west" output D1 (pin 3) is "rotate east" both have to be connected to a driver and a relay Ack input (pin 10) is connected to the reed switch in the actuator for position control. It has do be connected through a debouncing circuit I'm not a kernel expert, so this module is probably bug ridden. I also didn't care for backwards compatibility: the module only builds under kernel 2.6. It should be possible to build the module by simply typing "make", provided you have the kernel source for the currently running kernel *and* /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build points to the source tree (this is the case with Mandrake once you installed the kernel-source package matching the currently running kernel, other distributions should do the same). Since the module uses the parallel port interrupt to count pulses, be sure that you give the correct parameters to the parport_pc module since the default is to use no interrupt, e.g.: modprobe parport_pc io=0x378 irq=7 If you don't do so, when you load this module it will complain that it didn't find an interrupt for the port (look at dmesg output). WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING Frank Welter <frank.welter at skynet dot be> lost many hours of sleep because the module was counting pulses even with nothing connected to the parallel port. It turns out that there's a problem with some motherboards and the pic (Programmable Interrupt Controller) that generates bogus interrupts on irq 7. The problem is best explained here: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/linux.kernel/messages/12fe109073f549e7 You can workaround this problem by assigning a different irq (e.g. 5) to your parallel port (if the parallel port is integrated in the motherboard look in the bios setup). Note that this interrupt cannot be shared, i.e. it must be exclusively assigned to the parallel port. If you also have to assign a non stantard address (i.e. not 0x378), you'll have to tell the actuator module the address. Let's say you set your parallel port at 0x278, irq 5: modprobe parport_pc io=0x278 irq=5 insmod actuator.ko base=0x278