On 12/19/2015 4:24 AM, Chris Olson wrote:
Is there some fundamental difference between these methods of output to the driver that might trip us up as we simplify the scripts and port to new computer platforms?
assuming 'serial' means RS232 asynch, the biggest tripup is that new computers don't COME with any serial ports, they are considered 'legacy', so you end up having to use USB Serial port adapters, many of which are nearly junk. stick with the FTDI based USB-Serial adapters from reliable companies for the best results.
If this is RS422 or some other sort of high speed serial, that requires special adapters, well, the biggest problem will be that new computers are almost entirely PCI-Express, both ISA and original parallel PCI are history, so you may need to find and qualify new adapter boards.
as far as how to best write your programs and scripts, well, thats up to whatever techniques your development engineers are most comfortable with. Me, I'd probably be doing something like that in Perl or maybe Python (even tho that would require me to learn more python).