Hey, I require information on streaming data from a program that I create to a custom built piece of hardware. The hardware will be attached to the serial port, so that it can receive data from the computer. ( For those that are interested I''m building an embedded processor testbed for writing and debugged programs written for embedded processors ). Specifically, I need to know the protocols that are used for the serial port ( UART? ). Can anyone point me to a website about serial port access and programming? Also, will I need to write my own device drivers for this piece of hardware, or can I "cheat" it by just writing to the port, and not caring about whats there? ( I did that with the parallel port once ). This is still in the design phase, I''m just researching on what ports are viable to use. Thanks in advance, Phil.

Thanks for the site, it''s a gold mine

quote:Original post by Stoffel

I''ve done this exact thing (serial control of embedded system) at least on 4 different projects over my career, both in DOS and Windows, so just post any questions you have.

Cheers, I may just do that

Thanks again,

Phil.

I just finished writing a device driver for a UART chip (and I''ve written them for 2 other different chips as well).

It''s a very simple process, regardless whether your polling or using interrupts.

Basically you''ll want all you''ll need to interface the hardware is 4 functions: UARTinit(BaudRate), UARTputChar(Character), UARTpoll(), and UARTgetChar().
And those functions basically (besides init) will check a bit on a register (to see if chip is ready for read/write), then either write to a register, or read from a register.

Simple.