Hi,
Very soon the Parallel printer port will disappear (from laptop's is already gone).
I have seen that Mach is supporting only two external output boards : G100 from GeckoDrives and ncPod.
Unfortunately both of those are expansive and their schematic and firmware closed.
Did someone considered to use a simple output board like this :
http://www.olimex.com/dev/images/PIC/PIC-USB-4550-sch.gifhttp://www.olimex.com/dev/pic-usb-4550.html or even better
http://www.olimex.com/dev/sam7-p256.html (SAM has a much higher amount of ram and 60mhz clock ).
Those chips have usb connection and their price is around few euros.
I would like to try to implement a very simple board like this having following functionalities :
- receive and send data trough usb port
- store received octets into a circular buffer
- send this data on a timer from buffer to output pins
This will ensure that data doesn't depend on variable transfer ratio of usb port.
If someone it is willing to help me and it is able to write the plugin that will drive this board please help.
I'm intending to make available for free the schematic, the firmware and most important to run the tests until is running.
Also if you have experience please tell me what could go wrong with this ideea !
Regards,
Daniel