Here is the icing on the cake. It is a low cost 12 volt input
 switching power
 supply for mother boards. You can run you PC in an airplane or a car.
 Paul Lamar


Paul -

That is so ... YESTERDAY. (Re-attached you original "VIA-power-
supply.jpg" pic.)

Try this one on for (small) size: a 12V DC-DC power supply for Mini
ITX boards that's only slightly larger than the power connector
itself! (Smaller pic attached below yours.)

http://www.mini-box.com/DC-DC
  or
http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/power_supplies/dc_converters

Might as well save space when building PCs for aircraft.

-Vince Orton

Wow! Cool Vince. Thanks.

-------------------------------------------------------
After a week of screwing around trying to get the bidirectional
printer port to work. I gave up. Apparently there are no
real standards for this out there as it was implemented
only on the PS2 and nobody copied it exactly. The low cost
solution was staring me in the face. Craig Smith suggested
this awhile back but it had to gestate in my feeble mind.

http://www.hytekautomation.com/iDAQDownload.html

Not only does it have 8 channels of 12 bit A to D but 16 bits of
digital I/O AND a counter for RPM. This will off load all the real time
stuff. MAF, MAP, coolant temp, oil temp, etc., etc..

This device has all we need and it only cost $90 bucks.

Paul Lamar

--------------------------------

Why not just use a sound card for your ADC and DAC? Your average sound card
has at least 2 DAC outputs (headphone L+R), and 2 or more ADC inputs (Stereo
L+R Mic or Line input). They typically have 16-bit resolution, at 48 kHz or
better sampling rate. It's cheap (included in most motherboards), reliable,
widely available, and here is a good programming example:

http://xoscope.sourceforge.net/

they've also designed a hardware buffer to clip out-of-range inputs:

http://xoscope.sourceforge.net/hardware/hardware.html

Mark Tomich

That is something I should look into. Windows does not allow
direct hardware access so real time would be a problem but
I think there may be some support for sound in Power Basic
running under DOS.

Paul Lamar