Never developed any I/O stuff before, I'm simply experimenting at the moment, so forgive any stupidity please.

What I want to do is get a reading of a potentiometer into my computer.
I'm assuming I have to convert the analogue signal to digital. There seem to be a number of ways to do this but the most suggested is using a pic.

From here it's a question of connecting via the serial port or parallel port.

Is this correct? Does anyone know of any good tutorials on this at a very basic level.

Cheers for any help in advance.

 

well, ya, you would need to convert the resistors value into voltage and then use a analog to digital converter to send info to the computer.
but for resistors for a value up to 400k and with a small precision of 1-2K you can mesure it with the joistick port.
simple joysticks have 2 poteniometers wich the computer uses to determine the position. just put the resistor in place of the pot and you might read the value. you can use simple software like pascal do built a programm, i have something if you are intersted in this iddeea