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From: Sean Kelly <kelly@fsl.noaa.gov>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: tw0 driver for xten
Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 17:09:29 -0600
Organization: NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory
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Mike Whitley wrote:
> On boot up I consistently get tw0 not found at 0x378.
> Anybody have any hints?
One word to summarize my experience with the tw0 driver: TERRIBLE.
It's not the driver's fault really. It's the fact that so many parallel
ports, their I/O chips, and motherboards vary so much that it's not
reliable to use the port for anything but unidirectional communication
to a printer and nothing else.
In my own fury of wiring combinations, pull up resistors, and strange
hacks I was able to disable BOTH my parallel port and my tw523. My
parallel port no longer prints under FreeBSD (but, strangely, it still
works under DOS and OS/2). And my tw523 emitted nothing but perfectly
clean 60Hz sine waves on all three of its connectors: zero-crossing,
output, and even input!
Anyway, given all that and the fact that the tw0 driver puts your system
into sleeps ever so often while it quickly polls the parallel port I
decided give up.
I highly, HIGHLY recommend the LynX-10 by Merrick Products. It has a
serial port on one end and a port for your tw523 on the other. It's got
its own clock and relieves your computer from having to perform the
zero-crossing detection and timing. It detects collisions and
automatically retransmits. It's got a number of built in shortcut
commands and uses a plain ASCII text interface.
I got mine from Home Automation Systems in kit form:
http://www.techmall.com/smarthome/1150.html
or you can get an assembled version in a nice case:
http://www.techmall.com/smarthome/1153.html
Have fun!
--
Sean Kelly
NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory kelly@fsl.noaa.gov
Boulder Colorado USA http://www-sdd.fsl.noaa.gov/~kelly/