watlers world wrote:humm after another look I just figured it was for amiga or somthing...
guess if its anything like the regular game bios win3x can use it
I don't think the one described in RBIL has anything to do with Amiga. From what I gather, Amiga joysticks were very simple (a handle with 2 axes and 1 or 2 buttons), and the MULTIJOY in the link I provided (not the one in RBIL) allows you to have as many as six of those attached to a PC though a parallel port.
The one in RBIL is simply _appears_ to be an extension to the regular INT 15h BIOS that allows for multiple joysticks. Like I said, it has some "holes" in it that make it unusable in some respects. E.g., although RBIL never explicitly states it, it is implied that once you select a particular joystick through the MULTIJOY interface, you then poll the joystick using the standard functions 0 & 1 to obtain the actual button and axis data. However, one of the parameters MULTIJOY returns is 4 bits that are the "number of axes minus 1", which implies that each joystick can have as many as 16 axes. The standard joystick BIOS, of course, can only return data for four axes -- so how do you get the data for the other 12 axes? Or, even though MULTIJOY reserves enough space for 16 axes, does it really only expect that there will be at most four axes? There's simply too much ambiguity there to be able to build an interface around it. Since I've never seen an actual implementation of it, it's hard to determine what the original intention was.
It would be possible to update, or at least clarify, the MULTIJOY interface to make it at least usable. But, like I said, if anybody's going to bother making a new interface (which is what an update to MULTIJOY would be), it might as well be a "complete" interface that can handle all of the modern hardware including VR body suits, force feedback, tactile feedback, and anything else that may be relevant. It is not trivial to design such an interface, nor is it easy to implement it, and a well-designed interface may not resemble MULTIJOY in any way. And if there are no practical uses for it (e.g., new games being developed that can use it), it's not worth the effort.
watlers world wrote:when you use a serial (COM) cable with interlnk
not only can map your disks but it can map lpt ports
the lpt port it maps has no port address (as far as I know)
and showsup under win3x
perhaps it would be the same as networked lpt ports
That's probably true. My USBPRINT program (USB printer/parallel port driver) works sort of like that -- it provides a BIOS interface (INT 17h) and a DOS interface (LPTx), but doesn't virtualize the parallel port I/O the way USBJSTIK does with the game port. DOS programs rarely use direct parallel I/O, because (unlike the serial and game port BIOS interfaces) the parallel port BIOS interface is actually very fast and reliable. I suspect Win 3.1 might work with a USB printer and my USBPRINT program, but don't know for sure.
watlers world wrote:I'm interested in getting pin data from remote lpts
In USBPRINT, I have also created an extension to the standard INT 17h BIOS that allows for reading data (the standard INT 17h only allows for writing). You can install USBPRINT even if you don't have any USB hardware, and it will read from standard parallel ports as well as USB parallel ports. You might be able to get it to do what you want with an INTERLNK parallel cable or some sort of custom cable -- don't know for sure, though.
watlers world wrote:actually rs232 interlink is more like the insane mans network.
Maybe, but even RS232 INTERLNK was better than floppy disks.
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Interesting. I may give it a try sometime. I don't have Win 3.1 installed on any of my systems any more, but will try to check it out.
Since you've done that, and seem to be interested in Win 3.1, I'm wondering if you can do something similar for the mouse? That is, make a Win 3x mouse driver that uses the PS2 BIOS instead of direct I/O. That would allow you to use a USB mouse with Win 3.1 and my USBMOUSE driver, even if the computer's BIOS doesn't support USB mice.