But for every annoyance Gates and Co. introduce to operating systems, some
other hardware manufacturer comes along with a new device to help.   A new
PIC device, the 16F628, has come along as a replacement for that old PIC
workhorse, the 16F84.   It is pin and functionaly compatible with the 16F84,
has more memory and its greatest advantage, a built in UART.  So now even
simpler serial comms becomes possible in a PIC without tying up the code
just polling or sending RS232 characters.  The 16F628 is also cheaper than
the 16F84 !

So let Windoze just drive the serial port as it seems to still be able to do
(how long will that last ?) and use a PIC to turn the 8 bit words into
useful functions.

There is another PIC device, the 16C745 which has a USB core included, ready
for when even the serial port becomes obsolete on PCs.  The data sheet for
this device is available from the Microchip website, but when I enquired of
it about a year ago, the devices themselves did not seem to be available
yet.

Andy  G4JNT

From Alberto .......

  I don't have handy in this moment the API Reference, but I am afraid that
the old trick used with the good, old DOS of using the status lines of the
serial
port as parallel output lines is not available when working with Windows.
With Bill's baby, the only possible use of the serial port is that of, well,
a
"serial port"  :-) , unless I stand corrected after having perused the APIs.
If you need parallel output lines, then the printer port seems to be the
only choice,
unless you put an UART or a shift register connected to the serial port.
I don't have enough info on the USB port to be able to comment on this
latter.
But, if you don't need to transmit more than one frequency at the same time,
the 8 data bits of the parallel port allow for 256 tones, which should
suffice.


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