Re: A little more information

[Tom Droege <tdroege@veriomail.com>]

Arne,

Oh! No you don't!  Talk me into feature creap that is.  ;^)  You won't get 
me attempting to add a serial IF into an existing system.  I know why you 
want it.  There must be serial to fiber optic converters on the market.  If 
you need such a device then that is the path I would choose.

I have now looked at the parallel port, and it looks like all that is 
necessary is to rewire one end of the DB-25 cable.  Then write the DMA 
software that puts the event onto disk.

Tom Droege

At 08:32 PM 8/14/01 -0700, you wrote:
>Bill/Tom's high-speed serial card is a reasonable solution
>in that the approach is to take the parallel I/O data at the
>Stamp end, convert it to serial for transmission, then convert
>back to parallel using a PCI card.  I'd like to know how large
>the FIFO is, what kind of handshaking is available, and how
>elaborate a PCI interface was made.
>   The real solution is to get rid of all copper between the
>Mark IV and the host computer.  This means to use fiber and to send
>the RS232 over the same link if it is bidirectional.  The RS232 stuff is
>slow speed compared to the rest, but you have to break it out
>at the Stamp end to make it look like a standard RS232 port plus
>parallel port, unless you want major software work on the Stamp as well.
>Since I raised my hand to work on the BX24 upgrade, we might
>be able to add such support in the fancier chip.
>   The PC printer port solution is ok if you use the ECP
>protocol, since that can use DMA access and removes the typical
>latency problem.  However, ECP protocol usually means additional
>software on the Stamp end in order to handle the port negotiation.
>Note that all of these solutions means work, which is why I'd
>like to see some more effort put into the memory cards first.
>Tom, you want to take data, not build another piece of hardware!
>Arne