pc communication

noobieocer

New member
hi. i'm currently in my second year of uni studying electrical and electronic engineering, for this semester i will have to build a devices capable taking orders from the pc. now i have almost no clue how this works, because i am going to program a micro controller to control the input and out put modules on the device and communicate to the computer, i will need to know exactly what happens.

in college i got 2 computers to communicate to each other, this was done using a dos application and was told that the process involved a handshake which the computer checks the hardware is connected.

1) is this still the same with windows xp sp3?

2) also is there a set pattern which i have to output / input ? ie send Hex F3 and if receive Hex 51 it means it connected properly?

3) what happens after the handshake?

4) using a parallel port to connect, can i change the pins to out / in when i like? or after setting a pin to input it must only input?

5)what voltage does the parallel port use as logic 1?

6)now i know i need to sync the device and computer data transfer speeds or the data coming in will be all wrong. how do i do this?

7) anything else i should know?

sorry for all the questions, this is probably the wrong place to ask anyway. but i don't really know any electronic forums.
 
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