Some parellel port keys work, some don't

[Tobias]

Hey there,

I am using parallel port for response collection. My port ist &HD051 and I set a test slide to be terminated by ANY response made with the parallel port keys. That works fine with one device, but with another device id does not work at all.
Of course you may think that maybe the other one is broken. But a collegue of mine who is using "Presentation" software can use both just fine.

Any hint?
Best,
Tobias

[Paul Groot]

Which pin's are you using for input? The 8 data lines are sensitive to the port mode setting (Normal SPP, ECP, EPP). And what happens if you use a ParallelPort device instead of a plain Port device? (I think you need EP2-pro for this)

Paul

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[Tobias]

Hey, thanks.

I have E-Studio 2 Professional. I had a look at the control panel for the addresses of the parallel port and they are D050-D057 and D040-D047.

In E-Prime I have to specify the port and tried D050 first - which didn't work. Then I used D051 and it worked - but only for this one device. Not for another one.
I am not sure which pins/bits the buttons are using each, but it may be that the one device uses one different from the other device. I would like to tell E-Prime to use the entire port.

I don't know how to sepcify the port mode. I don't know the difference between ParallelPort device and plain Port device.
All I know is both devices I have here have 25 pins and 8 of them should be used to transfer the data, right?

Best,
Tobias

[Paul Groot]

Well, it's rather essential to know which pins are being used because different pins are mapped to different registers (i.e. different addresses). There are three 8-bit registers: data (base address), status (base address+1) and control (base address+2). The 25 pins are input, output, or bidirectional. The directionality of the data pins depends on the selected mode. For internal ports you can specify this mode using the BIOS setup, but I'm not sure how you this can be done with ports that are not integrated on the system board. The 8 data lines (which are mapped to the base register) are by default used for output only, so they won't accept any input unless you explicitly instruct the hardware to change its mode. The nice thing about the new ParallelPort object is that you can use the GUI to select input or output mode, without any further programming. There are also other advantages: http://www.pstnet.com/support/kb.asp?TopicID=1247. If your button box is not wired to the data lines, then they are probably connected to the lines that are mapped to the status register (i.e. base address+1). I don't think you can use the ParallelPort device in this case, so you could simply fall back to the Port device.


General info about the parallel port pinning and registers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_port
Info about using input lines with the status register: http://pfcgroot.nl/e-prime/85-tips-and-tricks/71-button-box-on-printer-port.html

best,
paul

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[Paul Groot]

PS. Perhaps the attached TriggerMonitor script is of any use. You can specify the input address in the startupinfo-file. This tool also has an option to reroute the input to another output port (although you probably won't use that feature.)

Paul

[Tobias]

Thanks a lot. That was really helpful. So I figured that the one device is using data, the other one is using status pins.
Apparently, &hd030 refers to data pins and &hd031 to status pins.
Similarly for the other parallel port, &hd050 refers to data pins and &hd051 to status pins.

This might also be helpful for others who try figuring out how to specify port settings in E-Prime.

I couldn't use your script, it seems to be made with a newer version than the one we have (2.0.8.90). But it works fine now so thanks a lot!

Best,
Tobias