DOS? Are you crazy Paul? :)
I was investigating Visual Basic for Windows and I was dismayed at the
complexity.
It is way over kill for what I want to do.
Namely display engine parameters on a note book or net book screen in real
time.
Notebook and net book screens are very large in terms of number of pixels
and cheap.
They can display dozens of engine parameter in a relative small space.
20 some odd years ago I wrote a fully functional aviation moving map program
in Quick
Basic that ran on DOS driven by a GPS using an RS232 serial interface.
Unfortunately RS232 serial interfaces have disappeared off note book and net
book
computers.
DOS is a close as anyone is going to get for a real time OS. The down side
to DOS is
it's limited memory management capability. For for my use it is quite
adequate.
Running on a modern computer it is lightening fast bordering on
instantaneous.
The big stumbling block as I see it is the lack of support for USB serial
ports.
That has recently changed. Apparently there are other people out there that
see the
elegant beauty of DOS.
Here is the break through. http://www.georgpotthast.de/usb/
Everything including a full blown EFI can be written in hours using simple
to learn
Quick BASIC. Quick BASIC is a compiled language and the programs are small
and
lightening fast. QB/DOS can handle real time hard ware interrupts which were
used in
my moving map program. The code is already written to read a USB GPS.
To do an EFI system it is necessary to add hardware of course.
One must design a USB interface board with addressable bit ports to
control
injectors and coils. There are probably some on the market already if I
bother to
look. After that an amplifier must be added to control the injectors. That
could be
as little as an FET power transistor. The modern coils can be controlled
with a
computer level bit.
Rather than spend 100's of hours learning VB I am going to look into this
approach
further. I have a real old IBM Think Pad that should run DOS no problem.
No Henry, not the late one I just bought in Shenzhen China last week :)
Paul Lamar
Paul
Have you looked at Puppy Linux? It is a very small Linux system that
can run totally in 256K of ram. You can boot it up and run it on a
memory stick...no hard drive necessary. There are lots of programmers
working with it contributing many special applications. It rums many
of the standard Linux programs. Great alternative to Windows also. I
use it for very secure web surfing. In general it is a little known,
yet very special and powerful development in personal computers. It is
worth learning about in general for anyone needing to get away from
all of this MS BS. It is very versatile and flexibly. You can even get
it's source code. By the way, did I tell you it is FREE...with a very
active community of supporters. As far as programming goes, the
support community can probably offer up at least a small C compiler to
run under Linux. Most likely you have one already. Boot it up on an
old laptop; and, that old brick will be reborn into a fully functional
high performance machine! ( That is how bad Windows really is) It
comes with a huge array of general purpose programs and valuable
utilities already installed...all on about 130MB of CD. Look into it.
you wouldn't believe how much is there. I feel you, as well as
others in this group, will find it worthwhile for at least something
your are doing....you'll like it.
Best regards;
James Freeman
The problem is you need an easy to learn and program language like quick basic that
supports direct hardware access for Linux. I have yet to find one.
For that matter I have found no reliable basics for Linux at all let alone direct
hardware access.
Paul Lamar
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