From: Robert L Cochran (hfoxpa.ajivojwsxf@lynchburg.net)
Date: Sun Apr 27 2003 - 01:00:58 EEST
Oh, and I'd like to make one more suggestion for what it is worth. The
Red Hat 7.3 OS comes to the end of it's life cycle in December. You may
want to upgrade it to Red Hat 9.0 even though 9.0 is based on UTF-8
locales which are currently causing a lot of pain with various packages
such as Perl.
Of course you don't need to bother with Red Hat 9 to start with.
You don't mention hardware details except that the motherboard has the
Intel 440BX chipset. That suggests it is quite old. That suggests that
Red Hat 9 might not run that fast on the existing board unless the
processor or the motherboard or both get upgraded.
But this idea might sidetrack you with more hardware bother than you
want or need.
If you do mess with Red Hat 9.0 be sure to apply all of Red Hat's
updates to it. Maybe they'll even fix Perl some day.
Bob Cochran
On Sat, 2003-04-26 at 17:38, Robert L Cochran wrote:
> I'm interested in the answer to this one also. I have a suggestion:
> check the O'Reilly book Linux Device Drivers to see what it has to say.
> I think it just came out in a new edition and may be useful. The Linux
> kernel book may similarly useful. This does not mean I know what I'm
> talking about. I don't.
>
> Can you keep me up to date on the answers you learn?
>
> Thanks
>
> Bob
>
>
> On Sat, 2003-04-26 at 16:26, Christian Reynolds wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > A Milwaukee, Wisconsin repeater presently has IRLP working on a
> > RedHat linux 7.3 box. That part is working fine -- what I would like
> > to do is utilize the computer's other ports to do administrative work
> > with the repeater's controller, so that performance reports may be
> > generated from the repeater's voter shelf and the repeater's
> > controller. The repeater sports a Motorola voter with several
> > receiver radios located at the transmitter site, and the IRLP
> > computer is within several feet of the communications hardware.
> >
> > I have 3 ports available to me for this project: 2 standard 9 pin
> > serial ports, and the Game / Joystick port. I cannot use the
> > parallel port, as it is supporting IRLP.
> >
> > Our goals:
> >
> > 1) Be able to program the ACC controller from the IRLP box (easy)
> > 2) Be able to tell the IRLP computer what receive site voted (hard)
> > 3) Upload that data to a website so that system administrators may
> > use it (easy).
> >
> > What I need to do is design the physical input system so that the
> > communications equipment can report to a port on the IRLP box, and
> > then I need to write some software to read the data and make sense of
> > it. I have some C and C++ programming experience...
> >
> > Thinking aloud, I am wondering if I can use linux to read the game /
> > joystick port. Let's say that each receiver has a wire that carries
> > a + voltage when the receiver is active (a COS signal). Can I assign
> > the pins on the Joystick port so that
> >
> > Pin 1 = Receive 1
> > Pin 2 = Receive 2
> > Pin 3 = Receive 3
> > Pin 4 = Receive 4
> > Pin 5 = Ground
> >
> > and then write code telling me if the hardware detects a signal on
> > that pin? If so, how? I assume that I can then write out the result
> > to a simple text file, or perhaps pipe it to a different process that
> > will tabulate the data. I am wondering if /dev/joystick is possible
> > so that I can reference it in scripts.
> >
> > I think I need to find hardware documentation on the Intel mother
> > board that is in there (BX class, 440 chipset) and I need to find out
> > how linux handles the joystick port. Is there a buffer in there that
> > I need to write code to extract an answer? How often can I poll the
> > hardware... I am thinking once each 1/2 second should be
> > reasonable... I do not need to bog down the machine looking at the
> > state in real time, nor want to look at a log file that is 800K per
> > day.
> >
> > As for the IRLP box controlling the controller, I think that a simple
> > shell with kermit running, and going out of /dev/ttyS0 will do the
> > trick. Hardwire the serial port from the controller (it goes to a
> > modem right now) and I should be able to run a terminal session like
> > that.
> >
> > Uploading the results will be done via normal bash / expect
> > scripting. We already do this with our IRLP logs to the website so
> > that members can see just how busy our IRLP setup is, and can see
> > where we have connected to.
> >
> > My degree is in computer science, and I am a network administrator by
> > trade. I'll admit to weak digital / chipset understanding. I can
> > solder and use a VOM meter, but cannot visualize logic circuts in my
> > head. Any and all help is appreciated, and once the process is
> > developed, I am open to publishing on the internet for others to
> > implement.
> >
> > Thank you,
> >
> > Christian Reynolds
> > KC0ARF
-- Bob Cochran Greenbelt, Maryland, USA Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-hams" in the body of a message to rwjry@uni-hannover.de More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
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