Because of current technology in the existing PC based controllers. The only common and affordable option is printer port. Other options are being developed, but will be some time before it is common place. There are other PC based controllers that use their own PCI cards, but their software starts at $799. As with everything, it is a balance. Make it affordable, but add some inconveniences. Make it easy, make it more costly.
My personal preference is a nice 1GHZ used machine to run the controller. Making it dedicated. That way, if you are into a large program and your nice program running in the background makes the determination that it's time to do something else.......
Most machines we have running here run on machines that I purchased for under $100. The most expensive was an HP Micro PC that is about the size of a book and ran $80.
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Direction, Commitment, Follow Through
Last edited by SyilAmerica; 03-23-2007 at 01:29 PM.
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