18 Oct
2007
18 Oct
'07
2:58 a.m.
Pete Turnbull wrote:
The user port was typically used for home-grown
digital I/O, but some
commercial hardware used it too, eg at least one mouse, some satellite
hardware, a turtle, a robot arm, and a CNC lathe controller.
... and the Buggy and trackerball. Somewhere I've got a Grafpad too; I think
that was possibly hooked up to the User port.
I suppose in the PC (as in IBM-compatible) world things tended to get their
own ISA card (if they couldn't be driven via RS-232). IBM really missed a
trick in not making the PC's parallel port bidirectional from the start. :-(
cheers
Jules