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Re: Controlling a Printer Port from Director?

From: Jeff Mann   jefmanutcc.utoronto.ca
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000 16:07:58 -0700

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Doug Back wrote:
> Do I hear this right? Someone has a way to take control of a Printer port
> (PC) through Macromedia's Director? 

No, we were talking about serial ports; the Mac's printer port is a
serial port. 

What about using a PIC 16F874 attached to the PC's serial port? That
would give you a cheap parallel i/o system that would be compatible with
both Macs and PCs, using the same Director application (I'm assuming the
serial port Xtra works the same on Mac/PC).

The '874 is an amazing chip for $15 ($9 if you buy 25). You get 33 i/o
pins, 8 of which can also be 10-bit A-to-D converters. You could write a
very simple program that would take serial characters from Director and
read/write the parallel pins. You could burn a bunch of them and the
students could use them without necessarily knowing PIC programming yet.

I've heard that a lot of OCAD students are buying iMacs, so this would
be good for them - they'd have to spring for the Keyspan serial adapter though.

>    My classes are too quite these days... just tappings from the keyboard
> and little mouseycliks all day long ake breaks and don't talk to each
> other... very Orwellian. If the computer/Director combo could be
> potentially dangerous... this would help.

Yeah, it could be very dangerous! I built a MIDI-controlled AC dimmer /
motor speed control with an '874 and some triacs - gave myself a hell of
a shock :-)

cu later <Jeff
-- 
Jeff Mann - Information Consumer ___O___O__= -- >
"Tapping one's toe in time with a piece of music while sitting on 
a modern carpet can induce +/-10 volt potential change on a can of
Spam five feet away."  - The Amateur Scientists' Bulletin

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