Hi,
Thanks for the previous posts guys. Is it ok if I got more questions?:
Are there any good/cheap (as in cheapest) PCI IO boards around? - ones that can be used with QNX for real time control?
Is it necessary/ or advisable to have C libraries with them?
Are there ones with A/D, D/A and some without (i.e. just IO)?
Is it cheaper with other IO boards that are not PCI?
Is it cheaper/better to use something like PC104?
Thanks again! 
Define cheap My experience is that these board are usually expensive because they are low volume. You can get a network card for 20$ but an IO card which is a lot simpler will easily run over 100$.
Most IO board are very simple to program and a C libraries isn’t necessary though it won’t hurt.
There are all sort of flavor of IO boards out there with lots of combinaison.
ISA are getting harder to find, and I don’t know about pricing.
As for PC104 it’s hard to tell, for an IO card I think the price would be comparable, but it’s the overall price you have to think about. A sound card for example can cost over 100$
Yeah, forget the libs, going direct is just as easy and you get more flexibility too. Not to mention that any bugs you find you can be sure it’s a hardware bug and not someone elses sloppy coding.
PC-104 does have an advantage of being simple to make your own custom PCB for.
It’s common for an off-the-shelf card to have 8/16 analogue inputs + a couple of analogue outputs + a few 8-bit ports for digital I/O + some timer/counters thrown in for good measure.
Hello!!
In relation with I/O PC104 cards, I think the Diamond ones from:
seem to be quite interesting.
Although it is not too hard to program the cards, they have drivers in
QNX for all cards. Has anyone tried one of these PC104 cards with the QNX drivers they provide?
Thank you