Having a generic driver that would allow one to send ECP or EPP data to a hardware device from Windows AND pick up a result via any of the reverse modes would be a great thing for PICListers and other device makers. But... I haven't seen one. Let me know if you do run over one... --- James Newton mailto:jamesnewton@geocities.com 1-619-652-0593 -----Original Message----- From: pic microcontroller discussion list [mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of Harold M Hallikainen Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2000 16:48 To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: Re: [PIC]: PIC16F877 and 186 solenoids Importance: Low On Thu, 9 Nov 2000 08:49:23 -0800 James Newton writes: > Please let me know if you learn anything about ECP or EPP operation > of the > PC Parallel port. I'm keenly interested in this and have not been > able to > get anything to work correctly under MS Windows.... in DOS, simple > tests > seem to work, but not under Windows. I have a page of info at > http://www.piclist.com/../io/parallel/port.htm > which describes all the signals and how they are used in various > modes with > links to documents about the modes themselves. This page is very nice! I did a product (http://www.dovesystems.com/starport.htm) that uses the parallel port running under DOS. The application is written in C and twiddles the bits of the parallel port directly. The StarPort originally used the 16c74 but was recently changed to the 18c452 when I needed more RAM (the Dallas DS1380 RamPort I had been using wes discontinued). The product page has a link to a page that describes the parallel port interface. I used a modification of the standard parallel port write, using a 1 wire handshake (the pin changes state to acknowledge reception of the last byte). The PIC picks up the 8 bit data using PSP mode. Data from the StarPort back to the host uses nibble mode. I'm thinking of changing the interface to have it look more like a generic printer (do they exist anymore??? My Windoze 98 doesn't have anything for a plain text printer). Instead of having to write drivers, it seems as though there should be a default driver where we can just send data to it and pick data up from it (using nibble, ECP, EPP, or whatever). Harold FCC Rules Online at http://hallikainen.com/FccRules Lighting control for theatre and television at http://www.dovesystems.com ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.