Hi,
Does anyone know of any Windows-based programs that will allow me to DIRECTLY access my PCI slots? I have an idea for an internal computer device and I want a user-interface. I have all the physical and electrical data about the PCI standard I need, I just don't write programs very well. Thanks.

__________________
<ckd>
"Chance favors the prepared mind."--Louis Pasteur (1822 - 1895)

 

its not as easy as plugging in a project PCI card and running some software. You have to take care of address decoding in your hardware, DMA if you want it, buffering, and the like. After that, to send or receive data to the PCI card, you would use the "in" and "out" commands in assembly. In C I believe they are "inp" and "outp"

-Bill

 

also, windows does not allow inp and outp commands anymore (no form of direct hardware control actually). So you will ahve to write a windows device driver for your card, wich is even more difficult...

bottom line, you really need programming expierience...

 

If you notice hard enough, if you plug in a PCI sound card into your computer, upon boot-up into windows, the soundcard is automatically identified under your hardware settings (ie not related to any single application!). This implies that it's plug-n-play, which whould mean you must need a driver for it. Not only that. Your PCI card has to be able to communicate its identity to the PCI bus, such that the bus driver can load the relevant drivers.
Driver programming is a whole new story. There are tools which make driver programming easier, such as Jungo. But still, what you are asking for is really no simple task.

 

PLX sells PCI to Standard microcontroller bus converter chips. If you really want to do a PCI project this is the way to go. You will still need to do some dirver programming but PLX should have some example drivers to get you started.

Brent