Parallel Port always in use?

I have a small device for burning chips for my parallel port and it worked fine under Windows now I want to use it with vmware under Linux (no Linux prog available). Funny thing is, that the traffic led of the device starts flashing wenn lilo (in my case grub) has finished its work. Sometimes I even think it flashing in the rythm of the lines appearing on the screen (some parallel-port console enabled???). And I think that is the prob why I dont get it working (is recognised sometimes after a lot of tries but doesnt work when trying to burn a chip).
Would be great if someone cpuld tell me if Knoppix has something enabled what merely jams up my port or something...(And how to disable this, of course....)