🚀 go-pugleaf

In comp.windows.ms.programmer, harti@mikro.ee.tu-berlin.de (Stefan Hartmann (Behse)) writes:

>I have just bought Visual Basic 1.0 standard edition and wanted
>to program a special hardware board inside the PC with it....
>Well, how can I use something like PEEK and POKE, which I learned
>is not available in Visual Basic ???
>How can I write Byte sequences directly to any hardware registers or
>adresses in Visual Basic 1.0 ??
>Is this possible in Visual Basic 2.0 ??
>Can I add any *.VBX file to get this available ?

Stefan,
It is possible, but not for the faint-of-heart.  On CompuServe (and probably
a good number of ftp sites as well) in the MSBASIC forum VB library the file 
is called "inout.zip".  The reason MS doesn't include this functionality in
VB 1.0 or 2.0 is that it is EXCEPTIONALLY EASY to corrupt the Windows 
environment by directly writing to hardware - definitely not for the average
software hacker (therefore MS limited their liability).

Some other sources I can think of that may sell toolkits for this:
     MicroHelp (1-800-922-3383 or 404/594-1185)
     Crescent software (1-800-352-2742 or 203/438-5300)
I seem to recall MicroHelp has a package called VB-Muscle that has this...
Hope this helps,
- Galen -