Leaderboard

The scariest thing (IMHO) is that people go to the effort This is a fun one though. LOLCODE HAI CAN HAS STDIO? PLZ OPEN FILE "LOLCATS.TXT"? AWSUM THX VISIBLE FILE O NOES INVISIBLE "ERROR!" KTHXBYE [/CODE]

Much better than serial (8 bit bi-directional, i.e digital inputs OR outputs ). My favourite low cost digital IO. Fantastic for foot-switches and system monitoring and essentially free. Unfortunately, not many PCs come with them nowadays. http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/B937AC4D8664E37886257206000551CB There are also a couple of examples in the "Example" finder. You have to check whether your motherboard already has pull-up resistors (most do, some don't). Then you can connect 5V LEDs directly or just short them to ground (if using as digital in). Note that logic is reversed since you sink to ground THROUGH the IO line to light an LED. I always stick a transistor in there too to be on the safe-side, since if you get it wrong...you blow the port. It also inverts the logic so I don't get confused (happens regularly). http://www.beyondlogic.org/spp/parallel.htm

the problem solving challenge reminds me of something... I'm all excited now :-o