Does BIOS support disabling it - is it enabled?

What OS are you running?

In the BIOS I can't enable anything. I am running MSDos. I have the exact same laptop once more where it works and is recognized. As this laptop is so old (386) I suspect a hardware issue but not sure.

Ok, you'll want to determine if any of the LPT is working (in which case it's most likely a failure preventing it from "fully" working", or if something in the configuration (or other software) is making it not appear at all (which can still be the case on a hardware failure, but I've found more often than not ... some portion of it still works)

If you have access to a multimeter, and can get to a command prompt on the system, you can use DEBUG to read/write byte values to the hardware and see if actual signal outputs change as they should.

It's good that you have another identical, working laptop as you can use this as a reference to confirm that the signals you are expecting to change when you "twiddle" the hardware registers = do in fact change.

The "standard" hardware I/O addresses in a PC for the three possible LPT ports are: 03BC, 0378 and 0278

If you need help figuring out what values you would write to which addresses, and what LPT port pins you should see change, I can provide lots more detail!

BTW, you may need to get to DOS to perform these tests - "modern" OSs tend to use the processor protection systems to prevent you from arbitrarily writing to I/O Ports. - Under DOS you can "do anything".

You don't need to "install" DOS - or make any changes to your hard drive (in fact you might want to just disconnect the HD during such testing)
Simply booting DOS from: Floppy, CD or USB will work fine!

Assuming you can get to DOS - I have a tool that you might find easier than manually "twiddling" bits with DEBUG.

It's called PPDEBUG (Parallel Port Debug) and shows you the parallel port pins updated in "real time" if they change, and also lets you easily toggle the LPT output pins.

Easiest place to get it is in the DDLINK.ZIP archive on my site. DDLIBK is a file transfer program that can move files over Network(LAN), Serial(COM) or PARALLEL(LPT)

Serial and Lpt require special cables, and as some might not already have "Null modem" or "Parallel data transfer" cables, I provide information on how to make them, as well as tools to test those newly made cables - PPDEBUG.COM is the tool to test a parallel port connection!