winston19842005 wrote:
On 5/23/08 10:25 AM, in article 4lkd345o0oqjv052od187ggik2nl5anos0@4ax.com, "Steve ][" <sc-ii@hotmail.com> wrote:I think I have found what I'm looking for. Vernier has a legacy product called a "Serial Box" that connects to a serial port and can take different kinds of (Vernier?) sensors, do the A->D work, and then pump it to the serial port. I have not yet seen how to to serial port programming via the ToolBox, but that's for another newsgroup post, I think this went pretty OT as it is. Thanks all!Maybe - perhaps. But it was a fun read! I always wanted to get one of those X10 systems for my TI... and there were some a->d cards available (early on)...
And they still show up on eBay from time to time. But for making 8-bit measurements of *slowly changing* quantities, it's often quite easy to interface sensors to the game port. That makes taking a reading as easy as using the PDL() function, and plotting and communication are very simple exercises. Broderbund made products and Vector made a business out of interfacing simple sensors to the game port--it's a shame that people don't seem to appreciate its versatility and simplicity. In my book, technical elegance = function / complexity. You don't get a high score by shooting for a complex solution to a simple problem. ;-) -michael AppleCrate: An Apple II "blade server"! Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."