24 Jul
2010
24 Jul
'10
8:38 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Right... Pity...
Hi Tony,
I'm sort of surprised to hear you say that RS232 ports on a PCI card are
OK with you. Maybe it's because I'm primarily a software guy, but for
some purposes I loathe RS232 ports on PCI cards almost as much as I do
USB. I think my loathing of both technologies is much the same as
yours, in that in some cases they both make it more difficult for me to
do precisely what I wish to do. Just as one example, I have some legacy
DOS-based software containing its own UART driver. I don't even want to
think about trying to make that work on a PCI card RS232 port.
BTW, I don't mean to imply that I unconditionally loathe these two bits
of technology - just when they get in my way. At other times, I greatly
enjoy the use of both.
Later,
Charlie C.
Just out of curiousity, do the USB-parallel adapters
support all the
low-level bit-twiddling that you can do on a real PC printer port? Can
you treat them as 12 digital outputs and 5 inputs?
Nope,. They generally appear as
a DOT4 printer device; in other words,
they make a parallel printer appear to the system to be a USB printer,
not the USB port appear to be a parallel port. But if you need the port, what's wrong with a
Centronics parallel port
or a couple of RS232 ports on a PCI card? They are the "real thing",
AFAIK.
Nothing, provide the host machine has a PCI slot. There seem to be an
awful lot of modern PCs that have USB as the only expansion.
-tony