Expert: vijayan - 3/7/2009

Question
Hi,

How are you?
I would like to start learning I/O port programming. I'd like to write software that controls devices through parallel and serial ports. I know a bit about programming but nothing much about ports. I have two questions:
a) Can you recommend good resources for learning this, such as websites and books?
b) Should I immediately try to switch to Linux because I hear this kind of programming is much more tricky for Windows? Also, I think Windows is generally performing lots of background tasks and therefore may be too unpredictable for device control. Is this true?
Thanks!


Answer
there is a fair amount of literature available. these are some books that have been well spoken of:
http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Parallel-Port-Interfacing-Acquisition/dp/08793...
http://www.amazon.com/Detecting-World-Capturing-Measurements-Acquisition/dp/0879...
http://www.amazon.com/Serial-Port-Complete-Programming-Circuits/dp/0965081923/re...

you should be able to to this kind of thing on both windows and linux. however, if you have a choice, linux would be more appropriate. you are freed from version differences (95/2000/xp/vista and so on). you have more control over the machine and therefore it can be made more responsive for device control. and the programming model is a little simpler; eg. this is all that you may need if your requirements simple: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/IO-Port-Programming.html