As described in previous GlassPanel emails, I ordered a data acquisition
board from Digikey, a DLP-IO20 board, ~$50

I received the board late last week and decided to try it out today.
After 16 hours of frustration, I do not yet have it working to my
satisfaction, but I am getting closer.

The 20 I/O port board works under Ubuntu using only TCL as the
programming language. I can send it commands, blink an LED with a
two-bye command... No C-programming required.

I am using a terminal program I downloaded from some TCL programmer's
web site. The huge/complex/do-everything terminal program is written in
TCL, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

My biggest problem is that most of the information provided by
manufacturers is bunch of sh_t, better yet described in MUCH stronger
terms.

I followed DLP's instructions. They said I needed a Linux driver, which
they provide on their web site. I downloaded the tar driver. It was
corrupted. Tried download many times. Bad driver.  I searched the web,
found that their driver was really provided by a chip manufacturer.
Downloaded it from chip manufacturer's site. Followed install
instructions. Modified Linux kernel. Wouldn't work. Corrupted Linux
kernel. Did more research. Found another web page that explained that
interface chip used is popular; that Ubuntu comes shipped with required
driver already installed.  But the previous failed install of new driver
had removed Ubuntu driver.  Had to figure out how to repair the Linux
kernel.  Finally got that done.  Wrote program to access IO20 board
according to documentation.  Nothing worked. Tried many off-the-shelf
terminal programs, trying to embed DLP's commands... they don't work
either. Experimented with various versions of my own program.  None of
them work.

I finally did a search of TCL terminal programs and found one called
Moni235, and lo-and-behold .... it talks to the IO20 board just fine.

So now I will have to go through the many pages of TCL code to try and
figure out what Moni does that is not explained by the DLP documentation
and what all the canned terminal programs do not do either.  DLP doesnt
answer their telephone, so I cannot call them and cus at them.  What is
interesting is that the IO20 board doesnt seem to give a hoot what the
baud-rate is, which explains why the documentation is all silent on the
subject.  ?????????

Will keep you posted.\

R. Berglund