A lot of the DOS USB support is now working thanks
to the efforts of Georg Potthast
http://www.georgpotthast.de/usb/dosusb.htm

The current hang up is getting the USB Hytek Automation
data acq board to work with Power Basic and
the DOS USB. Somebody is working on that at
Hytek Automation. That will expand the market
for their products. DOS is essential as it is
the only widely available OS that allows direct
hardware access in anything near real time.
I said 30 years ago "What we really need is a
32 bit DOS". Bill Gates did not listen :)

Waiting in the wings is a somewhat more expensive
approach and that is the Mesa Anything I/O card
with 72 I/O bits. They already have a DOS driver.

http://www.mesanet.com/

This of course bypasses the USB and goes directly
to PCI I/O parallel addresses. These are widely used
in NC Machine tool computer upgrades. I happen
to already have one for my NC mill.

http://www.rotaryeng.net/Nc-Mill-How-To.html

I would have to do a bit of hardware design
and development but I would get 8 channels of 8
bit A to D in 40 microseconds per channel using
a low cost National ADC0848. Not as good as the
HyTek board but acceptable for the EFI system.

http://www.rotaryeng.net/simple-cheap-555.html

The future is very bright for this approach
to real time hardware control as PC boards
will do nothing but get smaller and cheaper.

To cut programming time and programmer skill
level I think a high level BASIC programming
language is essential and that is where Power
Basic comes into play.

-----------------------------------------------
Part II

I got a discouraging email from HyTek
support and they don't appear to see the light.
So I decided to forget the USB port and fall
back to a somewhat more expensive
approach and that is the Mesa Anything I/O card
with 72 I/O bits. They already have a DOS driver.

http://www.mesanet.com/

This of course bypasses the USB and goes directly
to PCI I/O parallel addresses.  For a better
8 channel A to D I am going with a PIC chip that
can be programmed using the USB port on a Windows
computer and talk to the DOS computer using
a parallel port. There is extensive I/O support
in Power Basic for par. ports.

This is actually cheaper than the HyTek board and
has 10 bit resolution. It will probably be faster
as well.  Also better than the 8 bit National
Semi ADC0848. The 12 bits of the HyTek board is over
kill for an EFI system.

http://www.modtronix.com/product_info.php?products_id=86

The $10 IO8S is a A to D front end board that has been
designed to fit onto a MicroX SBC $50 Main Board  with a
front end connector. This board will normally be used
together with a MicroX SBC Main board. See attached picture
for an example of this board fitted to the SBC44EC board.

It makes 8 of the Main Board's port pins available
via a 3.81mm 10 pin terminal block connector.

This is real low risk from a software point of
view and is a classic trade off hardware verses
software.

This little board all by itself could be programed
as rudimentary EFI system but I want a better display
and extensive data acquisition as well as ease of changing
the mixture map..

This has been a rocky R&D road so far but we are
getting there.

Paul Lamar