[Lancaster] Hello

[Martyn Welch]

On Monday 20 October 2008 11:32:39 Ken Hough wrote:
> Not done much of interest myself. I've been trying to chase down a problem
> that I had during testing of 'wxAstroCapture'. As I've mentioned
> previously, this is a cross platform app for use with a modified webcam for
> astro work.
>
> I volunteered to do some pre-release testing under Ubuntu, SUSE, Win2000,
> and Win XP. I've got these four OSes installed on two laptops.
>
> I had no problems under Linux, but couldn't get full operation under the MS
> OSes. The app needs to write to the parallel port via /dev/parport0 under
> Linux and LPT1 under Windows. The developers sent me debug versions of the
> Win version of the app. All seemed to be working OK, but no output to LPT1.
>
> I eventually discovered a problem with the BIOS setting for the parallel
> port.
>
> Under Linux, all was well with the port set to 'bi-directional', but not
> under Windows. When I set the port to ECP, the Windows version worked!
> Fortunately, the Linux version also works with ECP.
>
> I had perhaps nievely assumed that if bi-directional was OK under Linux, it
> should be OK under Windows.
>
> Can anyone enlighten me on this difference?
>

The Linux driver probably reconfigures the hardware at boot. The standard 
windows driver probably leaves it in whatever state the BIOS left it in. 
Either that or Linux is just more robust ;-)

> I've also been trying out/testing my new quad core desktop PC. It's
> seriously fast when running 64 bit SUSE! I've decided that I will remove
> Windows Vista from the hard drive. It's so awful that I'm not going to
> waste hard drive space by keeping it. That's approx 360GB, approx half of
> the 750GB drive! Vista will not allow me to 'shrink' the Vista partion to
> less than this!!!
>

I'm not sure I've even met a windows user that has tried Vista and been overly 
impressed with it!

Martyn

-- 

Martyn Welch (martyn at welchs.me.uk)

PGP Key : http://www.welchs.me.uk/martyn/pgpkey/
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