30 Apr
2012
30 Apr
'12
8:53 a.m.
On Apr 30, 2012, at 10:50 AM, Keith Monahan wrote:
Oh, lord, here we go again.
USB is great for what it's great at, but it does have a nasty habit
of unnecessarily complicating simple things. They could probably do
a relatively simple hack and put an FT245 (USB->parallel FIFO) chip
on there that would work with some modifications, but then to make
it work on Windows, you have to make it install a driver (regardless
of whether you're using libusb or not). It really does a good job
of mucking up the simple things when you can bang something together
that "just works" on a parallel port, and it's aimed towards people
who can justify hanging onto some legacy equipment if they want to
burn some EPROMs.
I like USB well enough, especially for the more complex things that
it's good at (and the higher speed is certainly a plus), but I very
much resent how much higher the barrier to entry is for a USB
peripheral versus a simple serial/parallel port one. And yes, I've
had to write the code on both ends (host and device) for both USB
and "legacy" devices.
It connects to
the parallel port.
It sure looks like they deliberately hide that fact. I spent quite some time on their
website, and I was asking the same question. I *did* find an FAQ which was
"3. I have a computer with no industry standard ports. How can I connect the
programming unit?"
The answer is to spend another $100(on top of the already $300) buying a PCMCIA card to
add a parallel port.
Of course, it's interesting to note that it's "our fault" for not
having a parallel port. Not their fault for not keeping up with the times and using USB
like just about every other device on the market. It's "funny" in that it's written as
though THEY are the expert on what is considered industry standard.
It was industry standard when they wrote it, as you mentioned below.
I should point out that lots of PC motherboards still incorporate at
least a single serial port not because they expect people to be
using serially-attached modems, but because it's still the best way
to debug Windows drivers (having done so in the past) because USB is
one-way and 1394 is decidedly an outlier in the PC world.
- Dave