Re: How to write and read serial or parallel port

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 6:24 AM, Lester Caine <lester@lsces.co.uk> wrote: > viper wrote: >> >> is it possible to write and read data on a COM or LPT port? >> is there any function or class in PHP? >> >> anyone has already done something similar? > > > Talking in and out of the serial port is not too difficult but is OS > dependent, so what are you wanting to run on? Most of the time you are just > copying files in and out, although one can use the control signals as simple > I/O if you only need a couple of controls. > > Parallel port is a minefield on Windows as access is specifically blocked in > XP onwards. You need a modified device driver to bypass the blocks windows > puts in. I've not tried that with PHP as I'm normally accessing the parallel > port direct from other windows programs. > > Linux is lot easier, and most of the examples you will find via google are > geared towards that. It works like DOS used to :) > > -- > Lester Caine - G8HFL > ----------------------------- > Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact > L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk > EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ > Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk > Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk > > > > > -- > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > So for serial for example, you can just open the port up and work with it like a socket; read/write binary data. As far as parallel port goes, trickier, you may need to call out to an external program, or write a module if you need direct interaction in php. Real question is why in the world would you want to use PHP for this to begin with. I mean sure you can write your own vfat implementation in PHP, etc, etc, but it doesn't mean that it's a good idea to do so. -- Alex -- The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it’s too late. ~Seymour Cray