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Question & Answer
Classification: FAQ_CLASSIFICATION
Date: FAQ_DATE
What parallel port card is needed to talk to the XS Board?
Q:
I am going to place a dedicated parallel port card in my PC to use as an XS40 Board interface. I need a little more information about the parallel port card though.
- Should I get an 8 bit or 16 bit card?
- Should I get one that is 16450 or 16550 based?
- Should the port be bidirectional? d) Does it matter what IRQs it can use?
A:
Get whatever card is cheapest. Since it is only going to be used by the XS Board software, it doesn't require a card with high-throughput.
The 16450/16550 has more to do with the serial port UART that is normally included on most I/O cards. It should have no effect on the XS Board utilities.
It might be useful to have a bidirectional port when you start to write your own interface programs to pass data back and forth between the PC and the XS Board. But the XS Board software doesn't require a bidirectional port.
The Win95 version of the software doesn't use interrupts. Neither does the parallel port driver for NT. So you may be able to run the parallel port card without enabling interrupts (free interrupts are normally hard to find on most PCs).