What happened?
I killed one parallel port and I was not happy about it - excessive heat to a chip probably due to my terrible soldering technique at the time. I've improved quite a bit since then.
Heat kills chips; you can't heat a pin up for too long. Static, solder bridges, etc. are also common beginner mistakes.
Save the sidecar. You might need the shell, the connector, and other parts. Or you can even try to repair it one day.
Mike
Parellel port questions
Re: Parellel port questions
used a wire to reconnect the pin on the chip that is normally grounded. It works uni-directionally again. That is a relief, but I really want to get it to work bi-directionally. 
Enhanced PCjr with a jr-IDE (1GB DOM) and a parallel port side car with a compact flash reader and backpack 1.44mb floppy attached. Tandy video mod.