I-PAC programming with W2k / XP

[Andy Warne]

Just an update on programming the I-PAC under W2K and XP:
We are pursuing two different solutions for this. We thought about going down the route of using "Porttalk" or some other method of circumventing the W2K barring of access to I/0 ports but this seems to cause system instability and is not a very elegant solution.
There are actually two problems to be overcome in these OSes. Firstly the lack of direct port access, and secondly the OS's bar any write access to a keyboard device at the driver level.
So to overcome this we need a filter driver which slots between the device and the normal driver. This prevents Windows from grabbing it as a system device. This is being worked on, as well as a Win32 application for doing the actual programming, GUI etc.
Many people have spent a lot of brain-power on this and we are determined to get it working! I can't give an exact timescale yet though. For now, using a DOS boot floppy is the only method of programming under W2K / XP.
Andy

[sam]

Not totally on topic, but is a linux version of the iPac programming software planned?

shouldn't be too hard, i'd think, but maybe there aren't the resources.

[Andy Warne]

Yes a Linux version is in the pipeline.

Andy

[LakeShark]

I have written an I-PAC programming tool for Linux.  Currently, it's quite biased toward i386 users and is command line only.  However, I have provided instructions that should get it working with other architectures (completely untested) and  I'm currently working on a GUI.  I hope to have it finished within the next few days.  At that point, Andy has agreed to add it to the downloads page on his site.

If anyone wants to test it now (especially USB or non-i386 users), email me at tlvmail at bigfoot dot com.

LakeShark