I am seriously considering going back to desktop computers

Re:I am seriously considering going back to desktop computers by ecpottinger on Sunday October 25, 2020 @04:35PM (#24889671)

I notice the lack of user input/output options. USB requires you to jump thru hoops to use it and does not give the constance bandwidth I got with older ports that the CPU could bit-bang.

Today I have multi-GigaHertz machines that I can't build the simple projects that I could use with my Amigas because I have no way to interface directly to the buss.

The latency of what present computer supplies is horrible.

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Re:I am seriously considering going back to desktop computers by lukehutch on Sunday October 25, 2020 @05:13PM (#24889925)

These days the standard way to do this is to use a USB UART adapter, or a USB-connected Arduino, an Ethernet-connected Raspberry Pi, etc. -- they have GPIO ports, both analog and digital, as well as I2C, SPI, etc etc. There are enormous numbers of options for motor controllers and sensors available off the shelf. You can bit bang all you want from your desktop computer, via this interface!

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Re:I am seriously considering going back to desktop computers by ecpottinger on Monday October 26, 2020 @12:45PM (#24898159)

The problem is the bandwidth you get from such solutions. I could push 3.5 megabytes per second thru my Amiga interface, the USB->RS232 limits me to about 32 kilobytes per second.

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Re:I am seriously considering going back to desktop computers by jeffbee on Sunday October 25, 2020 @06:37PM (#24890686)

Hrmm. My latest PC motherboard has the usual 2x 16550 UARTs and a wealth of other headers for various serial protocols. The optional BMC board for same has a ridiculous abundance of GPIOs, too. And a parallel port on a PCIe stick costs $20.

It seems like the bit-banging abilities of these current PCs are as good as they ever were.

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