External I/O in Visual Studio 2005

Sojourner · Sep 22, 2006, 01:48 PM

Anybody know where I can find instruction topics on getting data from external devices in C# programming via VS2005? Help library and google searches have turned up very little. I'd be quite happy to learn for myself without bugging people if only I could find the bloody material.

I'm particularly thinking about (very retro) parallel and serial port-based data logging devices for a scientific graphing application. I did find a couple of articles on parallel ports, but the writer's english was so bad I couldn't figure out what he was using and why.

Scar_T · Oct 24, 2006, 02:47 AM

Under Windows XP/2000 you can't freely access to port from an user application, you need to use a driver. You can use IO.dll (http://www.geekhideout.com/iodll.shtml) for that purpose, it is free (for non commercial usage) and it has examples for using it with VB and VC++.

I hope you can use it with C# aswell, unfortunately I don't know too much about this language so I can't tell you how to use it in from a C# application.

Sojourner · Nov 3, 2006, 09:06 PM

Thanks - that's the kind of answer I was looking for. It does explain why I'm finding these things so complicated. It's going to take a bit of effort to work out how to use this .dll, though, as I'm a real programming rookie.

Sep 22, 2006, 01:48 PM	#1
Sojourner DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 12 Rep Power: 0	External I/O in Visual Studio 2005 Anybody know where I can find instruction topics on getting data from external devices in C# programming via VS2005? Help library and google searches have turned up very little. I'd be quite happy to learn for myself without bugging people if only I could find the bloody material. I'm particularly thinking about (very retro) parallel and serial port-based data logging devices for a scientific graphing application. I did find a couple of articles on parallel ports, but the writer's english was so bad I couldn't figure out what he was using and why. __________________ Athlon 64 3200+ 1GB Kingston DDR400 Abit KV8 Pro Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro 512MB AGP

Oct 24, 2006, 02:47 AM	#2
Scar_T DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 84 Rep Power: 0	Under Windows XP/2000 you can't freely access to port from an user application, you need to use a driver. You can use IO.dll (http://www.geekhideout.com/iodll.shtml) for that purpose, it is free (for non commercial usage) and it has examples for using it with VB and VC++. I hope you can use it with C# aswell, unfortunately I don't know too much about this language so I can't tell you how to use it in from a C# application. __________________ Scar_T - Parasite Coder

Nov 3, 2006, 09:06 PM	Thread Starter #3
Sojourner DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 12 Rep Power: 0	Thanks - that's the kind of answer I was looking for. It does explain why I'm finding these things so complicated. It's going to take a bit of effort to work out how to use this .dll, though, as I'm a real programming rookie. __________________ Athlon 64 3200+ 1GB Kingston DDR400 Abit KV8 Pro Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro 512MB AGP