I am a ASIC and FPGA designer and started to use Tk/Tcl as scripting language in ModelSim VHDL simulator.Has used TCL for debugging and test in product development.Has implemented a SPI Master by the use of lpttcl.dll refer to Parallel port.I have experiensed some problems with the lpttcl.dll on some PCs and Windows versions.Please note that the parallel port some PCs has a 5V output and others(newer) have 3.3 V !