It turns out that at least one eyetracker system is set up to automatically start and pause recording when Pin 1 on the parallel port is toggled between 1 and 0.

Pin 1 on the parallel port is the 'strobe' bit, according to

http://www.beyondlogic.org/spp/parallel.htm

The strobe bit is Bit 0 of the parallel printer's control register, which is found at the base address + 2. That is, if your printer is found at decimal 888, the control register is at 890.

So using the IOTester utlity found with every installation of MediaLab, you can send a test signal and see if it's working.

The proper MediaLab command would be

(d5,<1:890:5000>)

For a five second low-to-high pulse on the strobe line.