Hi,
since the market share of machines with a serial port is shrinking rapidly and USB debug cables are not affordable at all for hobbyists, we may need to support console on parallel port. I do realize that not all machines lacking a serial port will have a parallel port, but as long as it improves our console coverage, I'm inclined to suggest parallel console support as a viable option.
Parallel port console support has the advantage of being faster than serial port console, at the same time keeping the cost for a cable in the single digit dollar range.
What do you think?
Do we have any other devices on board which don't require interrupts to run? Floppy connector? POST cards? PC speaker (with 1-wire protocol)? Is it possible to use any of them with cheap home-built adaptors?
Regards, Carl-Daniel
I like the parallel port idea, but another possible cheapo ID is using port 0x81 as serial log.
Except PCI slots are disappearing too .... this is getting messy. I am always amazed that of all the things that
Universal Serial Bus
can do, the one thing it does very badly and at great expense is
Serial
ron
On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:28:40 +0200, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006@gmx.net wrote:
Hi,
since the market share of machines with a serial port is shrinking rapidly and USB debug cables are not affordable at all for hobbyists, we may need to support console on parallel port. I do realize that not all machines lacking a serial port will have a parallel port, but as long as it improves our console coverage, I'm inclined to suggest parallel console support as a viable option.
Parallel port console support has the advantage of being faster than serial port console, at the same time keeping the cost for a cable in the single digit dollar range.
What do you think?
Do we have any other devices on board which don't require interrupts to run? Floppy connector? POST cards? PC speaker (with 1-wire protocol)? Is it possible to use any of them with cheap home-built adaptors?
I like this idea. I would also be nice to be able to use a parallel port post (say that five times fast) card for embedded boards without a PCI slot. The one I have does both, PCI and/or Parallel.
On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 8:14 PM, Joseph Smith joe@settoplinux.org wrote:
On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:28:40 +0200, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006@gmx.net wrote:
Hi,
since the market share of machines with a serial port is shrinking rapidly and USB debug cables are not affordable at all for hobbyists, we may need to support console on parallel port. I do realize that not all machines lacking a serial port will have a parallel port, but as long as it improves our console coverage, I'm inclined to suggest parallel console support as a viable option.
Parallel port console support has the advantage of being faster than serial port console, at the same time keeping the cost for a cable in the single digit dollar range.
What do you think?
Do we have any other devices on board which don't require interrupts to run? Floppy connector? POST cards? PC speaker (with 1-wire protocol)? Is it possible to use any of them with cheap home-built adaptors?
I like this idea. I would also be nice to be able to use a parallel port post (say that five times fast) card for embedded boards without a PCI slot. The one I have does both, PCI and/or Parallel.
The question I have is, are there really systems out there that have parallel and not serial? I've seen/owned a few systems with serial and no parallel port (all OEM systems, HP and Gateway and the like), but none vice versa. If they exist, and there's a need for it, I'm all for it! As far as other options, I don't see any that aren't on their way out on your list, aside from PC speakers, which are being integrated onto the mainboard more and more often.
-Corey
On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 8:53 AM, Corey Osgood corey.osgood@gmail.com wrote:
The question I have is, are there really systems out there that have parallel and not serial?
I had a notebook with parallel and no serial, it was an acer
On 16.09.2008 08:53, Corey Osgood wrote:
On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 8:14 PM, Joseph Smith joe@settoplinux.org wrote:
On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:28:40 +0200, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006@gmx.net wrote:
since the market share of machines with a serial port is shrinking rapidly and USB debug cables are not affordable at all for hobbyists, we may need to support console on parallel port. I do realize that not all machines lacking a serial port will have a parallel port, but as long as it improves our console coverage, I'm inclined to suggest parallel console support as a viable option.
Parallel port console support has the advantage of being faster than serial port console, at the same time keeping the cost for a cable in the single digit dollar range.
What do you think?
Do we have any other devices on board which don't require interrupts to run? Floppy connector? POST cards? PC speaker (with 1-wire protocol)? Is it possible to use any of them with cheap home-built adaptors?
I like this idea. I would also be nice to be able to use a parallel port post (say that five times fast) card for embedded boards without a PCI slot. The one I have does both, PCI and/or Parallel.
The question I have is, are there really systems out there that have parallel and not serial?
I believe so, but they are on the way out as well.
I've seen/owned a few systems with serial and no parallel port (all OEM systems, HP and Gateway and the like), but none vice versa. If they exist, and there's a need for it, I'm all for it! As far as other options, I don't see any that aren't on their way out on your list, aside from PC speakers, which are being integrated onto the mainboard more and more often.
I just checked 101 AM2+ boards and 99 of them have a floppy connector, but only 90 have a serial port. Those 2 without floppy connector have a serial port.
Joe, I remember you were interested in crazy hardware hacks. Would designing a floppy->parallel port interface (or floppy->serial) fit your bill?
Regards, Carl-Daniel
Joe, I remember you were interested in crazy hardware hacks. Would designing a floppy->parallel port interface (or floppy->serial) fit your bill?
That would be a crazy hardware hack. I don't think it would be too dificult considering floppies are basicly serial devices. I'll do some research. I think the hardest part would be a driver/software able to manipulate the floppy port for serial.
Joseph Smith wrote:
Joe, I remember you were interested in crazy hardware hacks. Would designing a floppy->parallel port interface (or floppy->serial) fit your bill?
That would be a crazy hardware hack. I don't think it would be too dificult considering floppies are basicly serial devices. I'll do some research.
These are the signals:
http://hardwarebook.info/Internal_Diskdrive
I think the hardest part would be a driver/software able to manipulate the floppy port for serial.
Not so hard, it will just be bit-banging the signals. I would suggest using 8 output signals, one strobe out and one ack in to increase the transfer rate.
The drawbacks are that timing and thus transfer speed will differ with CPU speed and that it is relatively impractical to drive communication like this.
I'd like to also nominate PS/2 for consideration, it already comes with a serial transceiver (odd-8-1) and once the superio is configured, writing one byte should need just a few io instructions.
http://hardwarebook.info/Keyboard_%286_PC%2C_PS/2%29 http://hardwarebook.info/AT_Keyboard/Mouse_protocol and the PORTS file from http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ralf/files.html (search for K-P0060)
10-16.7 kHz it's kind of slow, but..
//Peter
On 16.09.2008 17:13, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
On 16.09.2008 08:53, Corey Osgood wrote:
On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 8:14 PM, Joseph Smith joe@settoplinux.org wrote:
On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:28:40 +0200, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006@gmx.net wrote:
since the market share of machines with a serial port is shrinking rapidly and USB debug cables are not affordable at all for hobbyists, we may need to support console on parallel port. I do realize that not all machines lacking a serial port will have a parallel port, but as long as it improves our console coverage, I'm inclined to suggest parallel console support as a viable option.
Parallel port console support has the advantage of being faster than serial port console, at the same time keeping the cost for a cable in the single digit dollar range.
What do you think?
Do we have any other devices on board which don't require interrupts to run? Floppy connector? POST cards? PC speaker (with 1-wire protocol)? Is it possible to use any of them with cheap home-built adaptors?
I like this idea. I would also be nice to be able to use a parallel port post (say that five times fast) card for embedded boards without a PCI slot. The one I have does both, PCI and/or Parallel.
The question I have is, are there really systems out there that have parallel and not serial?
I believe so, but they are on the way out as well.
Found one. The MSI K9AGM2-FIH has parallel and not serial. http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=prodmbspec&maincat_no=1&cat2... Chipset is AMD 690G/SB600, one of the candidate boards.
Regards, Carl-Daniel
-
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger -
Corey Osgood -
Joseph Smith -
Peter Stuge -
ron minnich -
Vincent Legoll