Here are some ideas for your new toy.
See if it will go into command mode or DOS mode. Don't laugh. Dos
has somereal time advantages. XP will go into DOS mode. If it
goes into DOS mode  itmay be possible to do all sorts of real
time  hardware stuff like fuelinjection systems. Windows and
Linux are multitasking which make them nearuseless for real time
hardware stuff. Too much background house keepinggoing on.

If it will run DOS it will probably run Quick Basic Compiler that
can  accessthe USB ports directly as serial ports in real time. I
run QB in XP all  thetime.  Quick Basic has real time commands
for directly controlling hard  wareincluding serial ports. It is
small enough that I can email it to you. It  isvery easy to
learn. Many of us older computer users already know how toprogram
in QB. I have tons of source code including a moving map program
that takes in data from a GPS. UPS GPS receivers are available.One
canbuy a USB to parallel adapter kit that will out put 8 bits at
a time withhand shaking. Each bit could control an injector. The
key is what is  avaiblein USB as most note books or net books no
longer have parallel printerports.

The other possibility is boot up DOS directly from a 3.5 inch
floppy disk.

I have a VIA EPIA PC mother board at the hanger that cost less
than $90  withthe processor on board with floppy connector. It
has a PCI connector so a  4parallel port card can be bought at
low cost and plugged in. The  combinationis way more powerful
than you need but the price is far far cheaper thansome embedded
systems that are designed for hard ware control. A fuelinjection
program can be written in minutes. The only thing missing is an  A
to D.Of course any old mother board will work too.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/empowered/pc3500_mainboard/index.jsp

I'll get it up and running tomorrow with DOS and QB.

Paul Lamar
Make a folder  under 7 called QB1. Save this zip file to that folder.
 unzip it and delete the .zip file. Call up the command line. "cd"
to the  qb1  folder with a successions of "cd". When you get there
type qb on the commad  line and the qb program integrated
development system will run. You will  come  up in the editor and
you can run the the program directly from the editor  or  compile it
from the editor. The help is self contained. The editor is smart
and will automatically correct a lot of your syntax errors. It is
the  easiest  programming language ever written.
type in this program:
for x = 1 to 10
 print "craig"
 next
 exit
A high speed data acq system is trivial to write.
 We are talking 1000's, of samples per second here.
It could be as simple as this
Start:
 data1= peek (xxxxx) 'where xxxxx is the address of the A to D
hooked to  ' the parallel port.  print data1  goto start
http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/zines/qboa/4-beginner.txt
Paul Lamar
Yes, package received. Thanks a bunch. This should be quite
 educational. When you talk about the bounces, there is an automatic
 security block on  Ford corporate servers that trashes all messages with
 .zip files  Probably something similar happened with your post to other
 members. This  address is  my personal box, so it comes right through. C.
 Smith
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Here it is my DOS QB EFI source code. Took me less time than I thought.
For illustration purposes I limited the A to D to 2 bits or four
 possibilities. Same for the RPM so this is a crude system.
 I simulated reading the A to D by a keyboard entry of an integer number
 between 1 and 16.
4 MAP readings  times 4 RPM readings is 16 so all we have is 16
 different pulse widths. Consider the integer PW number of 60 as 6.0 ms.
This of course could be expanded to a 8 bit A TO D in that case
there would  be 8 x 8 or 64 pulse width numbers. That should be
sufficient to get the  engine in the mixture ball park.
The trade off here is a couple of hundred dollars worth of stock
PC parts  compared to say something like a Megasquirt for easier
programming. All  sort  of other things can be done with the full
screen of course in terms of  displaying all sorts of other data.
For example the screen could read out  the  real time value of the
pulse width being used and the RPM. It could also  total the pulse
widths and read out the GPH. It could also run my DOS-QB  based
moving map software as I only need that data out of the GPS once per
second.
A program to access the USB port from DOS would be a big plus.
--------------------------------------------------
I improved the program somewhat by separating the RPM and the MAF
inputs to  make it a bit more realistic.
I also added a pulse width generators as mPC hard ware does not
come with  one.
CLS
INPUT "Input RPM "; RPM
 INPUT "Input MAP"; MAP
 position = RPM * MAP '"address" in the mixture table
TYPE PWlist
 PW AS INTEGER
 END TYPE
DATA ,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,
FOR x = 0 TO position
 READ PW
NEXT
 PRINT
'pulse width generator
 PRINT "00000000";
FOR y = 1 TO PW'delay up for  injector trigger.
 PRINT "1";
 NEXT y
PRINT "00000000"  'take the pulse back down
To change the mixture one modifies the numbers in the DATA line.
 This version is still 2 bits to keep it simple.
 3 bits would give us 7 combination each for RPM and MAF so the
 resolution would increase to 49 pulse widths.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Is anybody else interested in this approach. I can do a PC board that
 plugs into a printer port with injector drivers on it.
-------------------------------------------------------
 Here is a start on building a low cost A to D that will interface
to a  parallel printer port. Our mother board of choice has one.
Most early  motherboards had a parallel printer port. The rest of
the bits on the port can  be  used for injector drivers. One card
can do it all. However it might be  easier  to program if the RS232
was used for the A to D input and the printer port  saved for
driving the injectors. I'll look into that next.
The hex port addresses  for printer port can be PEEK'ed to read
them in QB  directly in real time.  Don't be confused by the Linux
code. DOS-QB can use  the addresses and read or out put data to the
port just as well as this  code.
http://tldp.org/LDP/LGNET/118/chong.html#Interfacing1

  -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 --
 Here is a handy hex to decimal converter. Decimal numbers are
easier to  use.
http://easycalculation.com/hex-converter.php
----------------------------------------------------
 This makes the DOS-QB-EFI look much better.

http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm
All sorts of possibilities are opended up.
 Booting DOS from a USB stick would be ideal,
 No need for a fragile hard drive.
 Booting DOS from a small net book from a USB 3.5 floopy drive.
 USB to par. printer port for injector triggers.
 USB to RS232.
The next thing is getting my tiny EeePC to boot DOS :)
---------------------------------
I wrote a short program to see how fast QB was in terms of instructions
 per second. This was QB running under Windows XP in a command window.
 This was my old HP notebook computer so I don't know how fast the
 processor is. My guess is 500 Mhz
Here is the program
 CLS'clear screen
 PRINT TIME$'print the current time to the nearest second.
 FOR x = 1 to  9000000  'count up to nine million
 NEXT
 PRINT x
 PRINT TIME$
The program completed in 3 second or 3 million QB instructions
 per second in interpreter mode. Plenty fast enough.
With out compiling this program and disassembling the compiled
code I don't  know how many machine level instructions were needed
for each QB  instruction.  The compiled code size was 26K bytes. The
compiled code took 8 seconds to  complete so something is strange.
Compiled should be faster. I'll run the  same test on the stand
alone DOS computer and report back.
Paul Lamar

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

<http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.phpThis will give you all the processor info.

Vlad

Have you guys seen the Jan Hot Rod. There is an article on the ISIS
multiplex system. I know it does not fit the inexpensive route, but the
master cell would run the engine ignition and EFI. With one slave the nav
lights etc could be run. Just interesting technology available.

DAle Davies
Can you scan it and send it to me?

Paul Lamar

As far as QB, I had
a course on it in the ninties when I was getting my BS.  We need to find an
inexpensive small computer that takes DOS. An outline of what hardware is
needed.  There seems to be QB sites on the web also.  I have a Timex around
here somewhere.

Joe Berki
Limo EZ

The VIA-EPIA- mother board I have cost $90 with the processor. All you need
is a minimum amount of memory as DOS only uses 650K. I have not tried it
 but there may be enough memory in the cache so you may not need to buy
 memory at all.

Paul Lamar



Hi,

How can i get a copy of the source code for the GPS and moving map?  I am
interest in understand how to make a GPS mapping  system work on my Netbook.
thanks.

ed kwok

It is so small I can email it to you in zip form if your ISP will pass zip files. Some ISP's won't. If I attach it to this message you may never see the message.

Paul Lamar