storing programs

Archiver

I have no clue the full capabilities of any of the BASIC Stamp
equipment, but I was hoping someone could answer a dumb question I
had.

I've seen these can store data, information, and send it back out
through ports. I've also seen the programming language is close to
BASIC (called PBASIC I believe).

My question is, can this device, with maybe some tweaking or
soemthing else, be able to run a dos program, and say send a program
down a cable for a POS terminal to be loaded with software?

I have a cable that connects from a RS232 female, to the POS terminal
itself.. and a program that can transmit the data using a com port on
a computer, but was hoping to find a small portable way to use this.

Please email me any suggestions (ebtguy@a...)
I don't know how often I'll be able to check this group, but I always
get my email.

Thanks

Archiver

Shaggy -

The Stamp could do this quite well, provided two
things: (1) the length of the program to download is
such that it can be stored in the Stamp, probably as
EEPROM data to save space; and (2) that you have a
documented way to start communicating with the POS
terminal and send the program as a bitstream.

Since you asked about running a DOS program,
requirement 2 may not be met. More importantly, since
the size of most POS programs would exceed the
potential 16K memory of the Stamp (models IIe/s/p),
requirement 1 is probably not met. The BASIC Stamp
does not run DOS; it's operating system is only meant
to interpret tokenized BASIC and handle some I/O. The
Stamp is well-designed for small control applications,
and is not meant for data memory intensive uses.

Your application might be better addressed with a Palm
or Pocket PC application. I am biased toward the
Pocket PC, but you may have to invest in extra cables
and software. I believe Pocket DOS is around $60, and
there is no way to assure that your existing
application will run on it. For a serial connection,
you may be able to use a sync cable, usually about
$40, or may require something like Socket
Communication's CompactFlash serial adapter, $135 in
most places. With the CompactFlash adapter, you may
need to store the program data in main memory,
although that is not such a challenge with Pocket PC
2002 devices mostly having at 64MB of RAM. I recently
got the Socket cable and have a serial sync cable, but
have not gotten around to figuring out how to make
everything dance. My experience with other platforms
is that sending or receiving the first byte will be
most of the battle.

Good luck

Bob Pence


--- shaggy_msm <shaggy_msm@y...> wrote:
> I have no clue the full capabilities of any of the
> BASIC Stamp
> equipment, but I was hoping someone could answer a
> dumb question I
> had.
>
> I've seen these can store data, information, and
> send it back out
> through ports. I've also seen the programming
> language is close to
> BASIC (called PBASIC I believe).
>
> My question is, can this device, with maybe some
> tweaking or
> soemthing else, be able to run a dos program, and
> say send a program
> down a cable for a POS terminal to be loaded with
> software?
>
> I have a cable that connects from a RS232 female, to
> the POS terminal
> itself.. and a program that can transmit the data
> using a com port on
> a computer, but was hoping to find a small portable
> way to use this.
>
> Please email me any suggestions
> (ebtguy@a...)
> I don't know how often I'll be able to check this
> group, but I always
> get my email.
>
> Thanks


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