Java Cookbook

Chapter 11. Programming Serial and Parallel Ports

Introduction

Peripheral devices are usually external to the computer.^[26] Printers, mice, video cameras, scanners, data/fax modems, plotters, robots, telephones, light switches, weather gauges, Palm Computing Platform devices, and many others exist “out there,” beyond the confines of your desktop or server machine. We need a way to reach out to them.

The Java Communications API not only gives us that, but cleverly unifies the programming model for dealing with a range of external devices. It supports both serial (RS232/434, COM, or tty) and parallel (printer, LPT) ports. We’ll cover this in more detail later, but briefly, serial ports are used for modems and occasionally printers, and parallel ports are used for printers and sometimes (in the PC world) for Zip drives and other peripherals. Before USB (Universal Serial Bus) came along, it seemed that parallel ports would dominate for such peripherals, as manufacturers were starting to make video cameras, scanners, and the like. Now, however, USB has become the main attachment mode for such devices. One can imagine that future releases of Java Communications might expand the structure to include USB support (Sun has admitted that this is a possibility) and maybe other bus-like devices.

This chapter^[27] aims to teach you the principles of controlling these many kinds of devices in a machine-independent way using the Java Communications API, which is in package javax.comm.

I’ll start ...