[Elecraft] USB ports and things - with corrections

[G3SJJ]

Many thanks Brian and Lyle. Been mulling this over whilst grass cutting! 
OK, so no real Parallel to USB converter exists. For my purposes I just 
need to know when using N1MM Contest Logger if whatever command is 
normally sent to Pin 14 on LPT1 (maybe Low for Radio 1 and High for 
Radio 2?) actually gets to the USB Port and is so if it then appears on 
Pin 14 of the 25 way D socket which plugs in to the DX Doubler.

It also occurred to me that I should really have put this question on 
the N1MM Reflector since many of the guys use SO2R and may have gone 
through this loop, so apologies to the group for wasting your time.

What is really driving on this one is that if by some lucky chance my K3 
arrived a few days before 28 July the IOTA Contest weekend I could 
probably run SO2R!!

Exciting times!

Chris Burbanks G3SJJ, G8D



Brian Lloyd wrote:
> 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
>
>
>