Serial interfaces (was Re: Any former Psion 5 owners out there?)

[Tony Duell]

> > Just out of curiousity, do the USB-parallel adapters support all the
> > low-level bit-twiddling that you can do on a real PC printer port? Can
> > you treat them as 12 digital outputs and 5 inputs?
> 
> Not as far as I can tell - they are printer interfaces, not GPIO.  I
> have never considered them a replacement for a real parallel port, but

I see.... So considering all the things I (and others) have made that 
link to PC parallel ports and which _don't_ use the centronics protocol,I 
can think of yet another reason not to downgrade to a modern PC.

> I didn't bring them up because the OP was comparing RS-232 (and stop

Sure... It's called topic-drift :-)

> bits, parity, baud rate, handshaking, etc) vs USB attached devices.

Actually, do the USB-RS232 adapters (I refuse ot say USB-serial, since 
there are many, many serial interfaces, including USB itself) allow you 
to do all you can do with aa PC Async port? Like setting odd baud rates? 
Or 5 bit mode (yes, I do sometimes want to talk to ta Creed 7)

-tony