I have a SUN SPARCStation10 and want to control the state of two output
wires.

Are there any pins on the mainboard which can be program controlled ?.

Does any kind of SA-BUS interface board exist with digital I/0 ?

I have a SA-BUS GPIB interface board successfully installed that will
control
external equipment.

Best regards, Eric.

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 16:19:49 GMT, "Eric Johnston"
<nospam@nospam.invalid> wrote:

>I have a SUN SPARCStation10 and want to control the state of two output
>wires.
>
>Are there any pins on the mainboard which can be program controlled ?.
>
>Does any kind of SA-BUS interface board exist with digital I/0 ?
>
>I have a SA-BUS GPIB interface board successfully installed that will
>control
>external equipment.
>
>Best regards, Eric.
>
>
Ouch! I'm never comfortable bringing logic-level signals off the MB
and directly to the outside world... The serial and printer ports are
better isolated from the logic on the MB and IMHO would be safer for
your computer than looking at non-isolated signals straight from the
TTL logic of the processor or peripheral control ASICs.

Have you tried using the parallel printer port? That's 8 individual
output bits and handshaking lines available- as well as inputs if it's
a bi-directional capable printer port. I've not done it in the Solaris
world (yet), but it works on Linux and windows. (Some CAM software
uses just the printer port to control a 3 axis milling machine.)

Or raise and lower CTS or RTS on the serial ports?

a/k/a Brian

Hi,

Eric Johnston wrote:
> I have a SUN SPARCStation10 and want to control the state of two output
> wires.
>
> Are there any pins on the mainboard which can be program controlled ?.
>
> Does any kind of SA-BUS interface board exist with digital I/0 ?
>
> I have a SA-BUS GPIB interface board successfully installed that will
> control
> external equipment.
>
> Best regards, Eric.
>
> '
You can perhaps use the printerport or use the serial port.

/michael

> I have a SA-BUS GPIB interface board successfully installed that will
> control
> external equipment.

If you need another SBUS GPIB card I have one spare :-)

--
Who needs a life when you've got Unix? :-)
Email: john@unixnerd.demon.co.uk, John G.Burns B.Eng, Bonny Scotland
Web : http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk - The Ultimate BMW Homepage!
Need Sun or HP Unix kit? http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk/unix.html
www.Strathspey.co.uk - Quality Binoculars at a Sensible price

"John Burns" <john@unixnerd.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:46248A97.1C29@unixnerd.demon.co.uk...
>> I have a SA-BUS GPIB interface board successfully installed that will
>> control
>> external equipment.
>
> If you need another SBUS GPIB card I have one spare :-)
>
> --
> Who needs a life when you've got Unix? :-)
> Email: john@unixnerd.demon.co.uk, John G.Burns B.Eng, Bonny Scotland
> Web : http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk - The Ultimate BMW Homepage!
> Need Sun or HP Unix kit? http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk/unix.html
> www.Strathspey.co.uk - Quality Binoculars at a Sensible price

Many thanks to all.

1. I'm now investigating using of one of the SparcStation10 serial ports to
connect to an external BV4113 module which has two i/o pins plus motor
control and an a/d converter. ref:
http://www.byvac.co.uk/shop/contents...ataSheet-a.pdf. It
would solve the my need to have two wires, one of which will go to select a
DC supply voltage ( 14 or 19 volts ) and the other which will turn on or off
a 22kHz oscillator. The BV4113 module would also solve the next stage,
which is to drive a motor forward and back (10 volts / 200mA) and sense the
output angle. Before I buying, my big problem now is how to write the c
code to send and receive characters to and from one of the serial ports.
Help on what c code to use would be appreciated - I'm using gcc complier and
Solaris 9. I have some familiarity with fragments of stdio.h, cgic.h, gd.h
and ugpib.h but need it very simple if I am to understand it.

2. Using the GPIB bus is an alternative approach and I wondered about kit
to go on the end of the bus cable which would provide assorted i/o lines,
voltages, relays, motor control and a/d converter. I've spent several
weeks getting the GPIB bus working well (under control of a c program) and
it would be not too difficult to expand on this experience with more devices
hanging on the GPIB bus. Option 1 looks the most hopeful as an AGILENT /
HP 34970A GPIB chassis plus suitable i/o modules costs far too much. I am
just doing it as a fun hobby project. I don't think an extra SBUS GPIB
interface board would help.

Best regards, Eric.

According to Eric Johnston <nospam@nospam.invalid>:
>
> "John Burns" <john@unixnerd.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:46248A97.1C29@unixnerd.demon.co.uk...
> >> I have a SA-BUS GPIB interface board successfully installed that will
> >> control
> >> external equipment.
> >
> > If you need another SBUS GPIB card I have one spare :-)

[ ... ]

> Many thanks to all.

[ ... ]

> 2. Using the GPIB bus is an alternative approach and I wondered about kit
> to go on the end of the bus cable which would provide assorted i/o lines,
> voltages, relays, motor control and a/d converter. I've spent several
> weeks getting the GPIB bus working well (under control of a c program) and
> it would be not too difficult to expand on this experience with more devices
> hanging on the GPIB bus. Option 1 looks the most hopeful as an AGILENT /
> HP 34970A GPIB chassis plus suitable i/o modules costs far too much. I am
> just doing it as a fun hobby project. I don't think an extra SBUS GPIB
> interface board would help.

Well ... many years ago I built a device (using a Motorola
MC6800 CPU and an MC68488 chip among others to interface a
computer-controllable high-voltage power supply (made by Fluke) to an
early HP desktop computer. Of course, HP called it the HPIB, and the
standard for it was IEEE-488.

And somewhat later, I helped two friends build GPIB interfaces
for Diablo daisywheel printers for use on Commodore PET computers (which
insisted on using the IEEE-488 bus for talking to printers among other
things). That was built using the Motorola MC6802, and (again) the
MC68488 chip. (Plus extra chips in all cases.)

So -- yes it is possible. If you have systems which will run
cross-assemblers or native assemblers for the MC6800 series CPUs, and
the ability to do wire-wrap construction as well as MC6800 assembly
language programming.

I don't know of any off-the-shelf devices for the purpose, but
that does not mean that they don't exist.

And if you got your sBus GPIB card from National Instruments,
congratulations on paying a really steep price. I have the cards, and
can't afford the drivers to talk to them, or I would be writing a
program to control a Nikon LS-3500 slide/negative scanner. :-) It seems
that the drivers alone cost almost as much as the drivers packaged with
the card. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.
--
Email: <dnichols@d-and-d.com> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 14:59:40 +0000, Eric Johnston wrote:

> http://www.byvac.co.uk/shop/contents...ataSheet-a.pdf. It
> would solve the my need to have two wires, one of which will go to select a
> DC supply voltage ( 14 or 19 volts ) and the other which will turn on or off
> a 22kHz oscillator. The BV4113 module would also solve the next stage,
> which is to drive a motor forward and back (10 volts / 200mA) and sense the
> output angle.

Why use an SS10 to control a satellite positioning motor and LNB when most
receivers have that functionality built in using DiSEqc. What's the
purpose for separate control?

Gerald

--
If you need to email me directly use: junkmail sysmatrix
Put the appropriate symbol in there and end it with a fish catcher.

"Eric Johnston" <nospam@nospam.invalid> wrote:

>I have a SUN SPARCStation10 and want to control the state of two output
>wires.

NAME
bpp - bi-directional parallel port driver

SYNOPSIS
SUNW,bpp@slot,offset:bppn

DESCRIPTION
The bpp driver provides a general-purpose bi-directional
interface to parallel devices. It supports a variety of out-
put (printer) and input (scanner) devices, using programm-
able timing relationships between the various handshake sig-
nals.

"Gerald" <not.valid@domain.tld> wrote in message
news:kLGdnZ40RIPvXrjbnZ2dnUVZ_sjinZ2d@sysmatrix.ne t...
> On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 14:59:40 +0000, Eric Johnston wrote:
>
>> http://www.byvac.co.uk/shop/contents...ataSheet-a.pdf. It
>> would solve the my need to have two wires, one of which will go to select
>> a
>> DC supply voltage ( 14 or 19 volts ) and the other which will turn on or
>> off
>> a 22kHz oscillator. The BV4113 module would also solve the next stage,
>> which is to drive a motor forward and back (10 volts / 200mA) and sense
>> the
>> output angle.
>
> Why use an SS10 to control a satellite positioning motor and LNB when most
> receivers have that functionality built in using DiSEqc. What's the
> purpose for separate control?
>
> Gerald
>
> --
> If you need to email me directly use: junkmail sysmatrix
> Put the appropriate symbol in there and end it with a fish catcher.

That is a good idea as it would neatly solve the hardware aspects: LNB
supply volts/22kHz tone and the motor drive and perhaps the positional
feedback. I considered using a satellite TV receiver, but I would have no
idea how to control it from the Sparc.

My progress so far is a good running c program in the Sparc that has the
following parameters ready (in logical form): LNB supply volts hi/lo, 22kHz
tone on/off, motor angle. I have spent a couple of months already getting
this program working, which successfully communicates each way to a web
page, connects to a spectrum analyser via the NI SB-GPIB board and draws
images.

Having solved the problem of sending/receiving information via the NI
SB-GPIB board, I could cope with some expensive AGILNET i/o chassis with
relays, a/d converter etc. The inexpensive serial wire motor controller
seems a much cheaper idea, but only if I can work out how to send/receive
characters down one of the Sparc serial ports.

Best regards, Eric.

Eric Johnston wrote:

>
> "Gerald" <not.valid@domain.tld> wrote in message
> news:kLGdnZ40RIPvXrjbnZ2dnUVZ_sjinZ2d@sysmatrix.ne t...
> > On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 14:59:40 +0000, Eric Johnston wrote:
> >
> > > http://www.byvac.co.uk/shop/contents...DataSheet-a.pd
> > > f. It would solve the my need to have two wires, one of which
> > > will go to select a DC supply voltage ( 14 or 19 volts ) and the
> > > other which will turn on or off a 22kHz oscillator. The BV4113
> > > module would also solve the next stage, which is to drive a motor
> > > forward and back (10 volts / 200mA) and sense the output angle.
> >
> > Why use an SS10 to control a satellite positioning motor and LNB
> > when most receivers have that functionality built in using DiSEqc.
> > What's the purpose for separate control?
> >
> > Gerald
> >
> > -- If you need to email me directly use: junkmail sysmatrix
> > Put the appropriate symbol in there and end it with a fish catcher.
>
> That is a good idea as it would neatly solve the hardware aspects:
> LNB supply volts/22kHz tone and the motor drive and perhaps the
> positional feedback. I considered using a satellite TV receiver,
> but I would have no idea how to control it from the Sparc.
>
> My progress so far is a good running c program in the Sparc that has
> the following parameters ready (in logical form): LNB supply volts
> hi/lo, 22kHz tone on/off, motor angle. I have spent a couple of
> months already getting this program working, which successfully
> communicates each way to a web page, connects to a spectrum analyser
> via the NI SB-GPIB board and draws images.
>
> Having solved the problem of sending/receiving information via the
> NI SB-GPIB board, I could cope with some expensive AGILNET i/o
> chassis with relays, a/d converter etc. The inexpensive serial wire
> motor controller seems a much cheaper idea, but only if I can work
> out how to send/receive characters down one of the Sparc serial ports.
>
> Best regards, Eric.

Many of the FTA receivers run linux kernels and have ssh/ftp/telnet
enabled. With a bit of poking around you could probably figure out how
to issue command-line equivalents to whatever the IR remote reading
daemons send out for channel up/down commands. You'd just have to set
up the database for the birds and LNB frequencies you want to hit and
assign "channel numbers" to them then issue the commands through a
persistent telnet session over a serial cable (or network on some
models).

FTA receivers can be had for under USD $100 on EBay if you just want to
pick one up to play with. Do a little research because some are more
'hackable' than others. Find the brand names by searching for "FTA
receiver" on EBay then Google around a bit.

I was just trying to figure out what you were pulling off the birds if
not audio/video/Internet streams.

Gerald

--