Re: Homebrew STG card - USB

[Doug Fortune <pentam-at-home.com>]

"Matt Shaver" <mshaver-at-erols.com>  wrote  Sun, 27 Feb 2000

>I'm all for starting with the ISA bus as PCI seems tough to do ....
>We could probably make a parallel port, serial, or USB to ISA adapter ...

If you wanted to consider PC ->USB->breakout box with I/O's
then the dirty work has already been done, and almost dirt cheap at

http://www.ActiveWireInc.com/

"ActiveWire-USB with programmable I/O pins that can interface to
  anything.  Control the pins from your browser by HTML/ javascript or
  VBasic or C.  Win95/98/2000, Linux, FreeBSD, LabView drivers available
  NOW! Macintosh next...  "

As a reminder, USB is about 12 Megabits/sec.  As another interesting twist,
Icron Technologies (http://www.icron.com) has figured out a way to extend
the USB bus to 300 feet (more with repeaters).   This has the possibility of
having the breakout box/ motor drivers  far away from the computer,  or even
motors at different ends of the factory controlled & co-ordinated centrally.

Doug Fortune
Calgary
pentam-at-home.com