Am 15.12.13 19:49, schrieb Al Kossow: Or an Atmel ATmega32U4 breakout board and LUFA. Not because its better then a FT245, but because thats what I have at hand. -- tsch??, Jochen

Relevant only to people who confuse "parallel port" with "printer interface". Unfortunately, that's enough people that we (FSVO "we") end up losing an extremely useful interface.... But do they offer parallel ports, or only printer interfaces? /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

Actually, PCI-e cards cannot be mapped on the traditional I/O address, because PCI-e bridge prevents this to happen. However, If you have a motherboard with PCI slots (in addition to your PCI-e slots) you still have the option to relocate the I/O base address, of course if you use a PCI board. -----Original Message----- From: David Riley Sent: Sunday, December 15, 2013 11:33 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Intel MDS 225 system being auctioned by Chicago Transit Authority On Dec 15, 2013, at 5:10 PM, Mouse wrote: They offer full IEEE-1284 parallel ports, often register-compatible with PC versions. However, they don't always show up in the traditional PC I/O ranges, making them somewhat less compatible with programs that expect them to be there. For example, I have a PCIe serial/parallel port card that works fine, but for my Xeltek ROM burner software, I have to run it in a VMWare instance with the parallel port address emulated, because the software talks directly to the hardware rather than using Windows APIs. - Dave

On 15/12/2013 22:10, Mouse wrote: That is an interesting question, and I think the answer is "it depends on what you mean" especially when running a 64-bit OS ..... Firstly PCI-Express is a serial bus with optional multiple paths so how the system manages the port mappings I have no idea but whatever it does any card on PCI can't just appear an an I/O address (well I don't think so any way). I believe Express Card is basically PCI-Express in a small format with hot plug.... Secondly 32-bit programs run in an emulation , so can't see real hardware and there is no Virtual i/o space again as far as I know so they couldn't see real ports.... Now I have PCI-Express COM: and LPT: ports. They both produce LPT or COM devices that can be used by legacy code through the BIOS interface. The COM: ports have device addresses that show up in device manager on the resources tab. However they are @ 0xC000 - 0xC007 which I seem to remember is outside the range of port numbers a 16-bit app can access, (not sure about 32-bit) so they probably aren't useful for old programs. They work fine with Windows programs such as Hyperterm (It does work if you copy it off an XP disk and REGSVR the DLLs) and PCOMMS. The "parrallel" card creates an "LPT" device BUT it does not have a resources tab in device manager at least when I am running 64-bit Windows. However it does appear to be accessible as a device. From a DOS prompt "Copy file.txt lpt1:" will plot a an HPGL file on a plotter plugged into "LPT1".... I also have a USB printer adaptors and that is a pure "Printer Interfaces", it doesn't have a matching LPTn interface.... However some how VMWare can virtulize the LPT port. So if I run XP in VMWare player I get real port addresses. At least some bit twiddling programs work as I can program my really old Spartan 3e "Sample Pack" boards using XP. These can only be programmed with the Diligent Parallel Port programming cable. This is definitley "bit twiddling" as it talks to the JTAG interface on the sample pack boards, JTAG is serial, and the interface has only circuitry to convert from 5v to 3.3 volt JTAG.... So "is it a parallel port", probably not, but if I can code to it in the same way I can probably live with it... -- Dave Wade G4UGM Illegitimi Non Carborundum