Ive been toying with this idea for a while and haven’t found anything by searching the forums.
I have an old Dell Precision 380 that I am using for multizone audio. (4 zones with a Gigaport USB DAC) Most of the zones are being controlled by an iPhone, iPad or local PC.
I have been thinking that there are a few places where a simple wired remote would be helpful> start/stop/mute/Vup/Vdown/next track.
The 380 I think must be one of the last machines made with a standard parallel printer port in it. It has occurred to me that keypads with 6 buttons would be very easy to build.
While I’m not likely to get around to doing any serious work on this for a few months (colder wetter seasons), I am thinking I should be able to map contact closures on the centronics port to specific functions in specific zones.
I guess what I am asking is, besides the centronics port having a limited future in computing, is there any reason not to pursue this?
Thank you!