Just in case you might be interested, I finally managed to track down my problem by probing the driver circuit with a scope. As you suspected, my parport is a bit weak on voltage. My stepper drivers are optoisolated and the leds are just too starved current wise to turn on most of the time.
On these drivers, the 5 volt input is set up to go through a 680 Ohm resistance so as to limit the current trough the led. I simply replaced that resistance with a 370 Ohm resistance and now, I get reliable stepping in both direction. I will see if the 50 Khz max steeping rate is ok for my current setup and if not, I will go definately go the 5I25 route.
Regards
Jacques