Re: Interface update

"Harrison, Doug" wrote:

> From: "Harrison, Doug" <dharrison@...>
>
> The idea of building the board as an ISA or PCI card brought mixed
> reviews.
> Based on your opinions and some new revelations, I am now leaning
> toward a
> separate card connected via a DB25 cable. Here are my observations.
>
> 1. The parallel port DB25 is mounted directly to the ATX motherboard.
>
> Sources tell me the ATX will probably be around for awhile and this is
> the
> MB we need to work with.

I have a design for a bus interface adaptor that I have
used with a number of different instruments. It is designed
to communicate with up to 256 instrument 'modules' with up to
256 registers in each module. It uses a 26-pin rippon cable
interface. The design for the adaptor was made for the
original PC parallel port, so it can only read back 4 bits
at a time through the control bits. I have made PC boards
for this. With all the pull-up resistors, it draws a bit of power,
and is powered by a 'wall-wart' power supply, and a 7805-type
regulator.

If people want to use this design, I could make it available, and/or
have a run of PC boards made, for a group project.

I have a sort-of driver program written in Turbo Pascal for
DOS/Windows. I don't have anything currently for Linux.

Jon