Serial port completely erased from the PC world? I
personally hope not! When the day comes OUCH! Have to
find out HOW to interface USB and the MCU together
which makes it unnecessary complex.

Anyway, I believe PC manufacturers do know that PC are
being used in factory environments. A lot of factory
interface uses RS-232.

John

--- Byron A Jeff <byron@cc.gatech.edu> wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 04:49:51PM +0800, Xiaofan
> Chen wrote:
> > On 2/5/06, Wouter van Ooijen <wouter@voti.nl>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > A big (literally) disadvantage of usb-parallel
> converters is that all
> > > versions I have seen have a cnetronics-male
> connector, which is bulky,
> > > and the corresponding female connector is not as
> easy to find as a DB9.
> > > A slight advantage is that usb-parallel
> conveters are somewhat cheaper
> > > than usb-serial converters.
> > 
> > Are USB-parallel converters common at all? To be
> honest, I have not
> > seen a physical one yet. USB-seral converter is
> much more common.
> 
> Ebay has a ton of them. Here's a sample:
> 
>
http://cgi.ebay.com/Dynex-6-Foot-USB-to-Parallel-Printer-Cable_W0QQitemZ6844731084QQcategoryZ51286QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
> 
> > 
> > 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> USB to serial (and parallel) hardware is hardly
> unique. I'm pretty sure I 
> could drive out to the Walmart just this minute and
> find at least one
> such adapter. With some simple hardware attached,
> some measure of control
> can be reacquired.
> 
> Now truly the point is somewhat moot at this point.
> Parallel nor serial ports
> haven't been buried yet. However, the need for them
> will dissapate as more
> and more hardware becomes USB attached.
> 
> BAJ
> -- 
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> 


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