pinouts from a toshiba equium laptop

Yes, very many people know where you can get that information. ;)

The starting point is what operating system you intend the programs to run under and what language/software development tools you intend to use. eg M$oft Windows XP and Delphi.

Such tools have libraries that allow you to control ports in the way that you probably want.

"Advanced" operating systems, such as M$oft Windows XP really require that you use these software development tools to develop code to access ports.

On the other hand, a DOS-type real-memory "unprotected" environment doesn't stop you accessing the hardware ports directly, using an interpreted language such as Basic/Qbasic.

The way that you access standard ports will not greatly be affected by which make and model of PC that you use - that yours is a tosh and an equium is not significant - programs that work on your computer will work on most computers runnning the same operating systems and vice versa.

ooo, the world is more enlightened than someone who was not aware it was so enlightened would have thought. ;oP

My Op System is M$$$$oft Windows XP.

I have Linux Mandrake 10 Community but (BUTT) it doesn't seem to want to work on my tosh equium (TOSH!!). Seems To$$$$hiba and Micro$$$$oft have a deal... ;o$.

IBM began creating their post 2000 machines with Linux compatibility. :o)

Oh how I wish I could go back to my IBM, and that I hadn't trashed it's graphics chip ;o(((.

HUH? speakee you dee English??

I have QBasic (1.1 and 7.1) on my Tosh, but am I precluded from it's use because I run XP?

Okay, all this said. How do I get my mits (or how does my machine get it's chips) on the software, user info and code??

cheers Sue!! I think :o/

William

P.S. Is the best forum for this kind of question or do you know of a better one??

P.P.S. What do you do with yours??

It is possible to read and write directly to/from the physical hardware registers of the serial port. The adresses to access are described here:

Depends what you are trying to achieve. You could boot off a DOS floppy or CD and use QBasic. Or you could use something like Delphi to produce code that will work under XP. I am not sure if you can access hardware ports with QBasic under XP - it is a bit like asking if you could drive a car if you were wearing roller skates.. not something I would care to try and I would expect a crash.

Delphi has been on the CD of many computer magazines. There are Delphi newsgroups and user groups that will help you develop your program, if you decide to use Delphi.

I use Delphi, mostly, for PC applications. There is a lot about Delphi that can be found with Google searches. I haven't tried the Delphi newsgroups or user groups - but they are probably very useful too.

:) now all I need is the programming language.

thank you.

Where did you get Delphi from? is it standalone or web based?

I looked at downloads, $$$5000 for a software package to allow me to rig the doorbell to my laptop. :( that's on expensive doorbell!!

Pascal, I never used Pascal yet. I envisage an adventure. (When I find the package at a proper price...)

Magazine disk. Stand-alone.

A thought:

You may be able to just link your doorbell to pin 12 (paper out) of a centronics port, install a suitable "noisy" print driver (they all seem to be, these days) that announces on the screen that the "paper has run out" = doorbell is ringing...

You may find this usefu:

Thanks again Sue. I signed up with ProgrammersHeaven.com so I'll have a perusal there and also ask some q's.

This may sound personal and lank me if you like but I've seen you posting in legal.wotsit too and was just wondering what you do.

Was a bit surprised to hear you do programming too!! Did you spend time as the moderator on legal.moderated?

William

"Billy H" wrote in message news:4391b574$0$82634$ snipped-for-privacy@ptn-nntp-reader03.plus.net...

I just found this site,

It is clear I could make my foolproof XP system less than foolproof, and an idiot of myself too.

William