WHOA! Microsoft strikes again...

The parallel port, designed by Centronics for printers, ended up as an easy to use interface for all sorts of stuff.

Since it was uni-directional, initially, someone came up with "nibble mode" for getting data from a device back to the computer, using four of the input signal lines for data, with the fifth input signal line for a strobe.

Later, the data lines were made bi-directional and there was a way to choose the direction. Then parallel port makers found that some software was unintentionally changing the parallel port direction, so they each implemented a different way of locking and unlocking access to setting the direction bit. This led to all sorts of issues with scanners, tape drives, ZIP drives, and parallel port floppy drives.

With IEEE 1284 and ECP, the transmission line characteristics were set to allow much higher speed transfers. This has some unexpected side effects on devices that were never compliant with the parallel port spec but worked previously.

It's hard to explain to someone why a new version of a chip no longer works with their product because their product violated the industry standard spec for years or even decades. For example, we dropped the Voh level to around 2.4V from close to 5V. Both were perfectly valid high signal levels. But some devices did not work with the lower Voh. Especially affected were devices that harvested their operating power from the signal pins, like copy protection dongles.

LapLink, as I recall. Worked great.

The original IBM PC Monochrome/Printer card could be hacked to be bidirectional by adding one roach wire. I used to have a box full of modded ones, because I did a lot of instrument control that way, back in the early '90s.

Death to copy protection dongles. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

As said repeatedly, there is: You have to know where to get the spare part. You only have to hoard things that are almost gueranteed unobtanium and cannot be made quickly. My mountain bike buddy is a machinist by trade. He can make just about anything, and does.

Might want to think about your design philosophy :-)

I have several designs under my belt that are long-runners. Some around

Again, most mechanical parts can be made. Most electrical parts can be bought or made. The PC can be bought. BTDT.

I learned that early on when I had my first car, a (by then) rare Citroen with an engine of a whopping 16hp. The carburetor went flakey and I could not find a spare. So I took it apart and rebuilt it. All I had was a hand-operated jigsaw, a file and sandpaper. Took some copper and brass stock and built parts. Afterwards the engine had as stable an idle as never before.

With experience, it is. And not just that. Any production engineer worth his or her salt will constantly scan the marketplace or subscribe to the usual magazines. They'll know where and how easily they can obtain a vintage PC replacement and stuff like that.

If urgent it does not take even one day. Production generally does not have any stock room for hundreds of machine parts. And usually they don't need it. Those folks are master planners when it comes to a lean operation.

Old American rule: As long as there is a market a vendor will take care of it.

Nope, lots of people got fired over excess inventory.

Probably a lot of those instruments are still in use. Just like a farm around here still uses their almond sorter designed and built in 1898.

That is even a problem with that dreaded HPIB bus. My Prologix adapter would not work with the HP-3577 which is what I need it for. Turns out the logic levels are marginal and luckily the designer of the Proligix was willing to correct the firmware and enable pull-ups in the uC inside the adapter.

For my whole life I have refused to buy software with dongles. I am not planning to change for the later part of my life.

My layouter has software that needs an LPT dongle. Needless to say that quit working with Windows 7 so he had to run his machine dual-boot until he recently figured out how to run ye olde parallel port under Windows

1. What a pain.

Actually, they are. Replacement turbo-props, and all the modifications that go with them, is a *very* expensive proposition. Commercial operators that still use DC-3s won't do it until they're forced into it. They'll continue to hoard engines as long as they can.

Change of subject noted.

Whole machine, no. They *will* keep a full set of spares, and that includes the computer that runs them. That's the subject we're discussing, here.

The ones that are financially hanging by a thread probably.

Nope, same thing. Whether they are transporting boxes of chocolate to Coconut Island or a loads of parachutists to 14,000ft they get paid for that service. In both cases it is simply a transportation job.

A turbo-prop has many advantages, Jet-A, fast climbs, reliability, among others.

Most cases I know there is no computer stocked. It is easy to replace. Even if they did stock one they'd have to re-stock that spare if used. And that was the subject we discussed, the fact that it's easy to obtain even if way down the legacy ladder.

Delta and KLM aren't the ones flying DC-3s. That makes the point even stronger. They know it's their company if they lose an aircraft due to a blown engine so they make sure there are spares available.

No, it is certainly *not*. One is a bunch of rich kids playing and the other is a working (mostly third world) airline.

Wrong. The economics are completely different, as are the risks of being down.

And another big disadvantage. A megabuck, or so.

Foolish!

You can stop that in Win10 by saying your connection to your ISP is metered.

Parachuting has got nothing to do with rich kids. I was a university student on a very limited budget when I did that. For the aircraft owner or company it is a normal transport operations with price/peformance ratios, competition, budgets, everything. It is in the end the same thing as freight or passenger service. Incidentally, most passenger service is also about people playing, meaning they fly to some destination for vacation yet a charter airlines has to calculate teh saem way any other operations has to, just like the parachuting fleet owner has to.

Sorry, but you are wrong about this. Parachutists get just as p....d about a cancelled flight as airline passengers do or as package recipients do when the package doesn't come. The latter happened to me recently because some malfunction forced the freighter pilot to return to Memphis.

You've got to run the numbers, just like with any business proposition.

Seems you've never run a specialty production.

Seriously? Do you have to file a request in triplicate for that?

Auto-updates are one of the many reasons for me why I so far never even considered a Windows 10 device for family use. Really problematic was a Nextbook tablet which had the battery partially depleted in the morning because it decided to download a major update despite being turned off with the power button. I returned it, also for many other reasons such as non-functional HDMI.

I'll probably wait until there is selection of decently priced Linux tablets. Right now there is only one from Spain.

Bullshit. It's a toy. Toys don't have the same economic constraints as business.

Utter nonsense. It's nothing but playtime. It's nowhere near the same thing as a scheduled airlines.

More nonsense. A PC board is double or triple-digit dollars. *Not* having spares for a multi-million dollar test system is just nuts. Sorry, Joerg, you lost this one. *NO* one is going to buy this story.

Appeal to authority. Any more stories tonight, daddy?

Nice :-)