Hello, Archie,
I know this message is old but I'm trying to do more or less the same thing. We have Macraigor Wigglers which connect to a parallel port and don't work under Windows 7, so we're trying to communicate with them using a server program called MacDemon under a Windows XP virtual machine. It works, but communication over the parallel port is unacceptably slow.
Did you find an answer or did you (like us) find yourself resorting to using two PCs?
Martin.