At 07:04 AM 12/10/2005, Freeman Pascal wrote:
>The lack of parallel ports can be addressed with USB to parallel port
>adaptors. A single four or eight port USB hub can reduce your port usage
>off the PC to one USB port. Of course this doesn't address the rest of
>the issues.
The SDR1000 doesn't look like a "printer".. the software needs control over
the individual port lines (including the printer status). Most
USB/parallel devices are actually USB/Printer interfaces and expose a
"printer-like" interface via their windows drivers, as opposed to a "legacy
set of parallel i/o ports at base address 0x378"
Then, there's the whole issue of hubs, and connecting multiple USB widgets
(bandwidth, negotiation, etc.)... which USB/Parallel widget is #1, then #2,
then #3, since they're all identical and have no switches, etc.
Actually, you could probably build a 1 parallel printer port to multiple
SDR parallel interface adapter. There are couple I/O bits I wouldn't need
to use for the SDR, and you could use them to control a "strobe steering"
widget. Might even be as simple as a '138 and a bunch of connectors.
You're then faced with the not-inconsiderable hassle of integrating this
into the SDR software, either the C# PowerSDR or the Linux version. The
prospect of forking the existing software and maintaining my own fork is
not pleasant.
OTOH, if you know of a suitable USB parallel interface solution, I'd love
to know about it (for lots of reasons). There's new stuff like this coming
out every day, as legacy ports become more rare.
>-Freeman, N5FPP
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