non-Audio DLL communications..

I recently purchased an interface board which plugs into the parallel port of my PC. The board comes complete with a DLL that allows you to include it within whatever program/language you are writing. It appears at first glance that the DLL-support objects in Max are limited to Audio functionality. Are there any objects available to communicate freely with general DLL files?

Of course the obvious solution is to have an equivalent to Johannes Zmoelnigs parallel object for Pd although judging from the archives this doesnt seem to generate any real support. Any light on these issues would be greatly appreciated.