Editing Doorport

doorport

this page is here to store information about the parallel port / door opener thingy that allows noisebridgers to open the door from a computer.

jake made a 30 foot (approximately) cable which has a female centronics-36 socket (like on an old printer) on one end, and a female DB-25 socket on the other end.  It is a cat5 wire which has eight conductors, and is passing through two ground wires (to pins 19 and 20 on the DB25) and three each of input and output pins.  These include pins 6 and 7 (bits 4 and 5 of the parallel data byte), and pin 16 (an output pin which is pin 31 on the centronics connector)


This is plugged into a USB parallel port cable (made for using old printers) which is plugged into Minotaur, the computer screwed to the wall over the "server room" door.

the other end is in the dirty shop and is plugged into the little circuitboard with optoisolators on it, which is for opening the door.  That board also has a male PS2 keyboard connector for 5v power, but that should be changed to connect to pin 7 of the DB25 port for power.  The software will have to make sure to always turn pin 7 to logical 1, so that power is available to the little board for whatever that does.. probably a pull-up for a signal coming into the parallel port. 

If you know anything about that little board and what it does (or is supposed to do) please put that information here.  Also please put the C program or whatever it is that talks to the parallel port and opens the door.