It turns out that the CUPS printing system, which is
the rh9.0
default, totally ties up the parallel port even when the defined
printer is a network printer. Once "cups" is loaded the port
becomes unusable even if the cups service is later stopped. The
only way to free up the port is to reboot the machine it seems.
Sounds like a bug report to the CUPS maintainers is required, or maybe
they'll know a workaround. As good as CUPS is, I bet they haven't
ever tested it with a MIDI device...
Cheers
Daniel