[TowerTalk] Computer control antenna switch

[R. Kevin Stover]

Jim Lux wrote:

> The real problem with using the printer port these days is that
> a) You're pretty well insulated from the hardware using Windows, so you 
> have to do all sorts of workarounds to talk to the bits.  You can set up a 
> plain printer, and talk to it as if it were a dumb printer, but you don't 
> have any control over strobing, timing, or the ability to readback the 
> port.  Yes, there are a raft of programs and windows drivers that get 
> around this, but since they violate a fundamental part of the design of 
> Windows (i.e. insulate user programs from the hardware), they tend to be 
> "picky" in their functioning.
> 

Agreed. Alas, MS decided a long time ago that their operating systems 
should be designed with "Mom and Pop" in mind rather than power users 
and developers.


> b) More and more computers are doing away with the printer port.  It's 
> physically a large connector, consumes board space, etc.  and most consumer 
> (read inexpensive) printers are USB using the PC as a computational host 
> for a lot of the printer function anyway.  When you're selling millions of 
> motherboards at $50 each, wholesale, getting rid of a 50 cent connector is 
> very attractive.

I haven't seen a mobo manufacturer come out with a product without a 
IEEE 1284 port yet.They won't be getting rid of the parallel port 
anytime soon. They are starting to cut out the RS-232 ports.
Yes, you see a lot of mobos from the manufacturers with multiple USB 
port configurations, the machine I just built has 8, but the current USB 
spec has some serious limitations. The 5m segment length limitation 
being the most notable.



-- 
R. Kevin Stover	ACØH

K2/100 #4684

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