[rescue] Parallel ports [was Re: Slightly OT: ?Bad Cap Saga]

[der Mouse]

> I believe the ATtiny2313 might be exactly what you'd want (hardware
> UART, external clock not required, DIP package).

That certainly makes it sound good.  ...google...  Tempting.  It's not
_exactly_ what I'd want; it demands something very much like a PROM
pogrammer to get code into it.

I also can't help wondering how you can have three general-purpose
8-bit I/O registers in a device with fewer than 24 pins; there must be
something I'm missing, but then, I haven't read the whole doc file.

> A good 232->uC that can go faster is likely to be trouble some,
> unless you have one of the really high speed serial cards for a Sun
> (or other machine).

I have a Magma SBus serial-port card that can be set to run as fast as
megabit speeds.  I don't know how reliable it is at such speeds, as
I've nothing for it to talk to at that kind of speed.  I might try to
build something of my own for it to talk to, but I have had little
success with logic circuits involving signals approaching the megahertz
range (no experience -> no successes -> still no experience).

> For a some amount more cash spent on the project, you could build
> something network capable and a lot faster.  To me, that would be the
> write way to do it.  It seems to me that ethernet isn't expensive if
> you can built it yourself, but it is pretty expensive to buy premade
> modules.

But then you need a computer on the far side of it, and you're right
back to getting the bits off a computer.  At least, I can't really
iamgine how you're going to do any kind of network protocol without
_some_ kind of computer to implement it.  Or were you thinking of doing
that in silicon?

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