Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco

[Tony Duell]

> 
> Pete Turnbull wrote:
> > The user port was typically used for home-grown digital I/O, but some 
> > commercial hardware used it too, eg at least one mouse, some satellite 
> > hardware, a turtle, a robot arm, and a CNC lathe controller.  I used it 
> > to interface to a PCB tester I made to test some circuit boards I made.
> 
> All of these can be hooked up with a serial port, so I'm still wondering 
> why today's machines are considered lacking for not having a "user port".

The _oriignal_ use of the 'user port' was for _users_ to connect their 
own gadgets to. 

It is a lot easier to connect you hamster wheel/ relay-to-control-lights/
homebrew circuit to an 8-bit parallel port than to a serial port (or 
worse a USB port). Yes I know there are microcontrollers with built-in 
serial ports, USH interfaces, and whatever. But the thought of having to 
write the firmware for the microcontroller, get it debugged, etc, puts 
people off. COnnecting a couple of resistors and a transistor together is 
an easier introduction to hardware hacking.

-tony