> From: piclist-bounces@mit.edu 
> [mailto:piclist-bounces@mit.edu] On Behalf Of Byron A Jeff
>
> > I will say to buy a usb-parallel to just build a cheap 
> programmer is a very strange idea. ;-)
> 
> The scope goes beyond that. With the impending death of 
> parallel and serial ports on PC hardware, there's no effective 
> way for hackers to control signals directly from their PC. 
> Folks like James, Bob, and  myself do not necessarily think 
> it's a good thing to be dependent on others  to supply
> extra hardware in order to have some measure of hardware 
> control from a PC.

Okay I only thought about current PICs when I said that. If I
start to think about AVR/MPS430/LPC ARMs and even the future
PICs, USB-to-parallel converter might be useful to build
a simple JTAG programmer and debugger. The only thing I have
access to and use the parallel port interface now is an ICE2000
which has been lying there for sometimes.

Maybe I am just a bit biased against parallel port based
things because I once had a ZIP drive which suffered from
the infamous "click of death"...

> You yourself have seen the struggle to get prebuilt hardware 
> to work with Linux for example. If all hardware is out of 
> your control,  then you are stuck with only with others supply.
> 

Okay I can better understand you now. Maybe I am pretty weak
in programming (I am much better at messing with software)
so that I think we should leave the hard jobs to those people 
who have the expertise and have spent their fare amount of
efforts on it ... I am still thinking in this line but I
can understand your motivation now.

Regards,
Xiaofan

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