RE: Re: Is xPL the ideal work-around? Need to access the LPT port from Mister House...

["Neil Wrightson" <neilw@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Gerry,

Good points, but! Now the driver is limited to parallel printer ports. I
have a 8 input (optically isolated) & 8 output (relay)) internal PC
card. As
well as a internal TTL based 48 I/O card.
It would now be a shame to have the driver limited to LPT style of ports
and
not be able to support the above cards.
I would think that if the person is savvy enough to be interfacing to
discrete I/O bits on a parallel port, they should be able to handle looking
in the BIOS/CMOS setup and locating the true I/O address of the printer
ports. The same would also apply to Apple PC's.

Perhaps the driver should allow addressing either via the operating system
handle or via direct I/O?

Regards,

Neil Wrightson.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gerry Duprey [mailto:gerry@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: Saturday, 29 October 2005 12:05 AM
> To: ukha_xpl@xxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [ukha_xpl] Re: Is xPL the ideal work-around?
> Need to access
> the LPT port from Mister House...
>
>
> Howdy,
>
> > I agree with your implementation of defining the port i.e.
> device=888 this
> > is not operating system specific (apart from apple of course).
>
> I respectfully disagree.
>
> You pointed out an exception right in your own comment, Apple
> (which I
> happen to know of at least two folks using xPL4Java on their
> OSX machines).
>   Also, USB printers and serial ports do not have physical
> addresses to be
> written to.  Solaris does not share the same underpinnings
> either (and there
> is at least one Solaris xPL'er out there I've communicated with).
>
> Any sort of address is always going to be specific to a
> particular piece of
> hardware, if not an O/S.
>
> And no, Java cannot write to a specific address directly --
> it can write to
> device names and those device names.  I'm working on a
> version of this that
> I hope to release in a few days.  It cannot take addresses,
> but does support
> any serial or parallel device your system knows about just
> ducky.  I've
> tested the base of it on Windows and Linux and have someone
> I'm asking to
> test for under OSX.
>
> Cross platform can be a pain and can often add some
> complexity to a simpler
> solution, but the benefits are great, fits better into the
> underpinnings of
> xPL which explicitly talk about being open to any platform
> and helps to
> expand the community of xPL users out there.
>
> In this case, the ability to use an OS specific name really
> doesn't step too
> far away from a native terminology -- I would think most
> Windows users are
> in fact more likely to recognize LPT1 than 888 ot $3BC, I beleive.
>
> Gerry
> --
> Gerry Duprey
> Ann Arbor, MI 48103
> http://www.cdp1802.org
>
>
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