[Elecraft] USB ports and things - with corrections

[Brian Lloyd]

On Jun 4, 2007, at 7:24 AM, lyle johnson wrote:

> You can buy PCMCIA or Cardbus to Parallel port adapters for $60 or  
> less.  But they don't work with many computers.  None of my Dells  
> that lack legacy ports will recognize any of the available cards  
> (or at least the three that I located and bougfht); my Dells with  
> legacy ports recognize and use all of them with no problems, so  
> there is a BIOS issue you must contend with.
>
> Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,

This is an interesting problem with a common thread. Much software  
has been written to make [mis]use of various interfaces on "standard"  
hardware. The use of a parallel port to control something is typical.

What we really need is a general purpose device that interfaces on  
the network and may be easily addressed by software. In most systems  
software has easy access to the network so it seems to me to make  
sense to put our various bits of I/O into a bit of kit that speaks IP  
and plugs into an ethernet.

Case in point, back in the early days of dial-up internetworking we  
had problems attaching many serial ports to our systems. The solution  
was to build a box (terminal server) that supported many serial ports  
but could be addressed across a network. No reason not to take that  
approach today.

As an example, Maxim (previously Dallas Semiconductor) makes the  
TINI, a network-enabled interface-on-a-chip. Everything is on the one  
device including ethernet, IP stack, serial, CAN, and bidirectional  
digital I/O. It would be easy to build an interface box using this  
device and use it to control the various components in your station.  
This is a much more elegant solution than trying to force-fit USB  
devices.

>
> 73,
>
> Lyle KK7P
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73 de Brian, WB6RQN
Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com