Anyone Built the 2-way Interface for an Aladdin?

[Martin Church]

Hi guys & gals.
I found a natty website for building a 2 way interface for the aladin pro. The parts cost me £7 but when I try to download my dive info datatalk datatrak & wlog tell me that theres no memo mouse or whatever connected.
Has anybody else had this problem? I'm assuming its because win 2kpro isnt msdoss based & I may need to try it on my works pc which has 98se on it but I could be missing the point here as per usual.
Thanks in advance
Martin
aladin interface

[Adrian Kelland]

Martin

I have tried one of these in the past with no joy.

I think you have to have the dos software as the Windows versions talk to the Memo mouse unit, rather than the Aladin computer itself. However the Aladin is required to control the memomouse. Not a good all round design.

Pure old dos software may not run on many modern pcs. A big problem is that modern pcs run far too fast for some of the timeing code (waiting for data etc). It times out before a response has completed. If you are using Win2k, IIRC software cannot talk directly to hardware ports, but must work through the OS. Old dos software may have had 'dirty' call direct to ports rather than using the OS. OK on DOS, not in NT based OSes.

I now have a memo mouse. Much better for holidays, download every couple of dives, come home, connect all up, transfer etc. All my profiles, not just some.

I don't think anyone has made a memomouse equivalent. They would have to reverse engineer the tranfer software to sort out protocols, and make hardware with memory.

Adrian

[Martin Church]

I have just realised i left the ground off between the board & the serial port quick solder job & it now works but it isnt bidirectional as id hoped.
I think you may be right I will consider the purchase of the memo mouse then i can play with my new toy properly.
Martin