[fpc-pascal]Embedded Linux Journal - ThinkNIC Contest
Jeff Wormsley
daworm9 at home.com
Thu May 17 06:40:42 CEST 2001
On 05/17/2001 at 12:07 AM Michael.VanCanneyt at wisa.be wrote:
>The only tricky thing might be controlling the bill validator.
I think that can be done fairly easily. I plan on stripping a keyboard and tieing the relay of the validator to a key (like F6 or some other rarely used key). So, each bill pulse will just be a keystroke. There is an enable signal on the validator, and I plan to use the keyboard's scroll lock signal to control that. There is a brief moment at power up that it is on, but no one should be using it when it is powering up. When my program is ready to run, I can turn on the scroll lock (I know how to do it in DOS/Win32, shouldn't be difficult in Linux) and the validator should be enabled. If the ThinkNIC had a serial port, I would use the more modern MDB (serial) validator, but as it is, that would entail buying a USB serial adapter and figuring out how to get USB support to work on the box, which is beyond my abilities. (There are only USB drivers for about 5 printers included with the package, and several people have had no luck getting USB to parallel port drivers working with it.) If worst comes to worst, Hagstrom Controls sells a Keyboard to I/O controller that is programmable. But I would rather avoid the $120(US) it costs to buy such a thing.
Jeff.
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