Re: Alternative IO cards

[John Sheahan <jrsheahan-at-optushome.com.au>]

Hi Paul

yes - thats the intel/microsoft published goals to make 
boxes cheaper / better.  6 PCI slots seems common.

serial and parallel can be reinstated externally with usb adapters.
As long as the SW can cope with the drivers.
I note too that usb parallel cables (ie a parallel port at the end of
a usb interface) seem to not hold data valid.  I have not yet checked
to see if s simple latch (on strb) fixes this for the data port.
Shall do soon. need it for my current PIC programmer.

I'm sure that clever motor control boards for PCI will be/continue to
be available, but I'd like to see this complemented with lower cost 
stuff for hobby machines like mine. Probably USB based.

I'll design and test the hardware but I'd need software assistance 
bolting the drivers to EMC.   Should be a candidate for Fred's
proposed site.  

Just slowly starting to get up to speed with options for the 
USB side of things.

Also - thought strikes me that modules like freqmod may suffer.
Due to the delays in software layers between the rt module and the port pin.
One solution would be to offload much of the real time behaviour to
the external interface.  

Any thoughts as to how much to aim for here?

regards, john
   

On Sun, May 26, 2002 at 09:29:34AM -0400, Paul wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi John
> 
> Just come back from a local computer fair - It is not just ISA slots that are 
> disappearing. One motherboard on sale had USD, Firewire, USB2, onboard sound, 
> video, etc,etc.. But no parallel or serial ports !
> The only saving grace was the three PCI slots.
> 
> If this is indeed the future of motherboards, then alternatives must be found 
> soon for the IO we need for machine control.
> 
> Regards, Paul.
> 
> 
> On Thursday 23 May 2002 7:09 am, John Sheahan wrote:
> > ISA is going away whether we like it or not.