What code to use? Is this even possible?

gropingmantis · 6 Oct 2011 at 19:46

Basically for a project for college I need to send a string of 16-bit words over eSATA. How would I even begin to do this? The only languages I can really use are Assembly and a bit of C but I haven't got a clue how to send something to an external port on a PC.

Anyone got any hints? I would have thought this would be possible and fairly simple (famous last words) but google and my reference books have thrown up a blank. I dont want to write to a file as I would be able to do that I just want to send only machine code down the line.

AndrewNR · 6 Oct 2011 at 19:53

Wont they just be a string of 16-bit binary codes e.g. 1111 0000 1111 0000, 0101 0101 1000 1001 etc?

gropingmantis · 6 Oct 2011 at 19:54

Yes thats the point. Its to control an external device.

Rich43 · 6 Oct 2011 at 20:37

Cant you use a serial port? or usb to serial converter?

gropingmantis · 6 Oct 2011 at 20:50

Potentially. Yes I think that should be possible. Does that make it actually do-able?

edit actually no because the peripheral device requires a 16-bit parallel connection and at the moment that is a SATA to PATA chip. So unless there is a way of doing 16-bit parallel from RS-232 then no it has to be SATA or eSATA.

ZombieFan · 7 Oct 2011 at 13:01

This stackoverflow question may point you in the right direction - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5070987/sending-ata-commands-directly-to-device-in-windows

Looks like it's quite a bit of work.