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From: valentin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Valentin Pepelea)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.amiga.hardware,comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Questions regarding the AMIGA parallel port
Message-ID: <10279@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 20 Mar 90 22:12:55 GMT
References: <1990Mar14.225744.5617@dvinci.usask.ca>
Reply-To: valentin@cbmvax (Valentin Pepelea)
Distribution: na
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 32

In article <1990Mar14.225744.5617@dvinci.usask.ca> gilchrid@herald.usask.ca (Darren Gilchrist) writes:
>We plan to use the AMIGA parallel port for I/O from/to a class project.
>
>    1. What rate can the parallel port handle I/O?

The 1.3 parallel.device can send out or read in about 5000 to 6000 characters
per second. (i.e. 50K bits/second in serial terms) Much higer throughput can
be achieved by reading or writing the hardware directly.

The current parallel device waits for an interrupt from the peripheral before
sending out the next character. A program which instead polls the BUSY
signal can achieve rates in excess of 100,000 characters per second.

>    2. How can one generate an interrupt so each sampling is handled
>       immediately upon completion?

Take a look at the hardware manual. When the *ACK signal is asserted by the
peripheral, it generates an ICR interrupt on the Amiga. If you wish to deal
with interrupt servers on the Amiga, I suggest you read Carl Sassenrath's
Guru's Guide, Meditation #1 - Interrupts.

>We will be developing our own software to process the samples and push the
>samples through the parallel to an D/A conversion circuit.

Busy polling would save you some trouble.

Valentin
-- 
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