12 Channel Parallel w/ Custom Addressing

[jlombas]

Hey KC do you remember the 12 channel parallel plugin that you designed last year which allowed us to put in custom addresses for generic pci parallel ports?

Since the addresses are all different in Device Manager (ie: 1429, 1430, 1431, etc.) do you think it would be possible to controll more than 3 parallel ports per computer provided that there are enough pci slots on the machine?

Just a thought,
Joseph

[teberle]

Jlombas,

You may want to move this to Change Request section of Vixen. This forum is geared more to developers who want to create plugins for Vixen.

Tony

[A Marchini]

Hey KC do you remember the 12 channel parallel plugin that you designed last year which allowed us to put in custom addresses for generic pci parallel ports?

Since the addresses are all different in Device Manager (ie: 1429, 1430, 1431, etc.) do you think it would be possible to controll more than 3 parallel ports per computer provided that there are enough pci slots on the machine?

Just a thought,
Joseph

Actually, from a development standpoint, I wonder if it would be possible for the plugin to query the PCI devices and find the addresses specifically. Actually, it may be best to get the enumerations that windows assigns to them, hmm...

Now that I think about it, you can only assume that windows enumerates the pci addresses linearly, as they are found in the slots. Hopefully this is the same every boot, I wonder if by the spec it is garanteed.

Tony M.

[jlombas]

Sorry Teberle, didn't realize that. If a moderator wants to move this over there that would be great.

Marchini - Last year I remember that I restarted my computer several times and the addresses remained the same each time. Now, I didn't change the hardware configuration in any way though so I'm not sure how that would effect the order of giving out addresses to each device.

Back to my original question though, do any of you think it would be possible to control say 48 channels with 3 PCI parallel cards + the built in one if the plugin would have an extra slot to put the 4th port's address in? I know before KC added that functionality we were limited to only using 278, 378 @ 3bc.

Joseph

[A Marchini]

Sorry Teberle, didn't realize that. If a moderator wants to move this over there that would be great.

Marchini - Last year I remember that I restarted my computer several times and the addresses remained the same each time. Now, I didn't change the hardware configuration in any way though so I'm not sure how that would effect the order of giving out addresses to each device.

Back to my original question though, do any of you think it would be possible to control say 48 channels with 3 PCI parallel cards + the built in one if the plugin would have an extra slot to put the 4th port's address in? I know before KC added that functionality we were limited to only using 278, 378 @ 3bc.

Joseph

I am not sure, but the looking at the 2.0 plugin... It looks like you can assign multiple cards to separate plugins.
If you have the cards, I would say...try it.
Tony M.

[jlombas]

Alright... I bought another card off Cyberguys today, I'll let you all know how it works out when it gets here.

[jlombas]

Well it seems like it works ok. Unfortunately my PC only has 3 PCI slots total and I had to remove my sound card... Looks like I'll be using my iMic for sound this year.

Using the same plugin that allows you to manually enter your parallel port address, has anyone tried using a usb/parallel port controller yet? I personally don't have one of these devices otherwise i'd try it myself... I'm just thinking of the possibilities with usb hubs/clusters of these controllers linked... Seems ideal for setups that spread over vast distances.

Joseph

[A Marchini]

Well it seems like it works ok. Unfortunately my PC only has 3 PCI slots total and I had to remove my sound card... Looks like I'll be using my iMic for sound this year.

Using the same plugin that allows you to manually enter your parallel port address, has anyone tried using a usb/parallel port controller yet? I personally don't have one of these devices otherwise i'd try it myself... I'm just thinking of the possibilities with usb hubs/clusters of these controllers linked... Seems ideal for setups that spread over vast distances.

Joseph

USB devices are virtual, and have no I/O addresses that the parallel port plugin uses to communicate with them. Another solution could be put together, but I haven't finished it yet.

Tony M.