Re: sound card DAC

["bfp" <bfp-at-earthlink.net>]

Dave wrote;

>While we are on this low cost track,  is it possible to read and write
>DC voltages to a sound card ?

Yes it is -BUT- only 8 bit values when writing directly to the sound cards
D/A converter,to get 16 bits requires using DMA transfers.
this could be a viable solution if you are willing to write the software,
2 of the older soundcards (not PnP) can be jumpered to co-exist in the same
box
and are available dirt cheap at most any computer surpluss store
of course you would still need servo amps,motors,digital I/O,encoders,etc...
so by the time youre ready to start pluging in cables the money saved by
hacking a sound card will be more than eaten up by the added time and effort
used in geting it to work with the rest of the system, at least thats how
I felt when I was looking into it

Brian

ref:
http://www.neutralzone.org/home/faqsys/docs/sbdsp.txt