Hello, let me give you a bit of background and then I'll explain what I'm looking to do.
I work for a textile manufacturer in Yorkshire. We have an old jacquard loom that is connected to a PC on which we load patterns from a floppy disk. Yes it's that old.
The PC connects to the jacquard via its parallel port. The software and interface were all bespoke and made years ago. We have no contact with the developer/engineer and it's not a standard off-the-shelf solution so there's no-one I can look to for support short of having a jacquard expert reverse engineer the entire system and software. Which is not viable.
The system just about works, but one of the things the software does is alert the user when a certain number of repeats have been woven by the loom. This alert takes the form of a flashing DOS prompt on screen. Unfortunately it doesn't actually stop the machine. Which is what I'm looking to try and make it do.
I'm wondering if it's possible somehow to analyse the data sent through the parallel port and check to see if there's any unusual data activity or voltage pulses sent along a certain cable when this alert activates. I have no idea whether originally this alert would stop the machine and so reading the data seems the only way to know for sure. I'm hoping then that there's some way to identify this specific stream of data or pulse and then have it trigger a micro switch which we can then use to stop the machine.
I'm an experienced IT user but my electronics experience is limited to basic tinkering with a Pi and an Arduino. That's not to say I'm not prepared to learn or advance my skills. Can anyone give me any advice on how I might be able to achieve my objective or recommend a piece of hardware to do the job?
Is there some sort of reader that can latch on the parallel cable and send the data to another device/laptop?
I work for a textile manufacturer in Yorkshire. We have an old jacquard loom that is connected to a PC on which we load patterns from a floppy disk. Yes it's that old.
The PC connects to the jacquard via its parallel port. The software and interface were all bespoke and made years ago. We have no contact with the developer/engineer and it's not a standard off-the-shelf solution so there's no-one I can look to for support short of having a jacquard expert reverse engineer the entire system and software. Which is not viable.
The system just about works, but one of the things the software does is alert the user when a certain number of repeats have been woven by the loom. This alert takes the form of a flashing DOS prompt on screen. Unfortunately it doesn't actually stop the machine. Which is what I'm looking to try and make it do.
I'm wondering if it's possible somehow to analyse the data sent through the parallel port and check to see if there's any unusual data activity or voltage pulses sent along a certain cable when this alert activates. I have no idea whether originally this alert would stop the machine and so reading the data seems the only way to know for sure. I'm hoping then that there's some way to identify this specific stream of data or pulse and then have it trigger a micro switch which we can then use to stop the machine.
I'm an experienced IT user but my electronics experience is limited to basic tinkering with a Pi and an Arduino. That's not to say I'm not prepared to learn or advance my skills. Can anyone give me any advice on how I might be able to achieve my objective or recommend a piece of hardware to do the job?
Is there some sort of reader that can latch on the parallel cable and send the data to another device/laptop?