Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Lament for the PC

There are some serious bugs in the keyboard microcontrollers accepting
writes. If it's an 8042 / 8049 based controller on the system board then
it's probably got those bugs. If it's an updated version using an 8051 or
8052 then those 'should' have been fixed. Depending on how interested the
vendor is in fixing bugs.

On some controllers, the documented way of doing writes just won't work.
Unfortunately, the last time I delt with this issue was 1997. Then I did a
test program and had the computer company I worked for's competitive
analysis lab run it on all of the different brand computers they had. It
worked out to about an even split 50% worked right, 50% failed. These were
brand new 97 model units.

Somewhere, in some deep dark archive I should have some 80x86 .asm code that
worked on 100% of those tested machines. Turning on the lights was one of
the test functions. If you are still interested in doing this I'll look for
the code. Wasn't there a BIOS variable table entry you could write to for
the lights? Seems like I did this on some program sometime. Maybe it's just
a fuzzy memory though. It's just been too long since I've done low level PC
programming. My goodness, I haven't written any 80x86 .asm in 3 years! Gotta
fix that!

later,
Larry E.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Marconett KM6VV" <KM6VV@...>
To: "CAD CAM" <CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 4:59 PM
Subject: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Lament for the PC


> Chris, list,
>
> Another lament for the PC. I tried to do a simple write to the keyboard
> controller in a stepper program I'm writing, and BOY did the PC hate it
> (crash)! In a windoz98 DOS window, I might understand, but booting up
> just into DOS? Dropped that Idea. I thought the "keyboard lights"
> would make good debug tools. Oh well, steal a bit on the parallel port,
> hook up a 'scope.
>
> Alan KM6VV
>
> Welcome to CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@...,an unmoderated list for the
discussion of shop built systems, for CAD, CAM, EDM, and DRO.
>
> Addresses:
> Post message: CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com
> Subscribe: CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
> Unsubscribe: CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
> List owner: CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO-owner@yahoogroups.com, wanliker@...
> Moderator: jmelson@... timg@... [Moderator]
> URL to this page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO
> bill,
> List Manager
>
> FAQ: http://www.ktmarketing.com/faq.html
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>