At 02:06 PM 10/27/99 -0700, Chris G. Demetriou wrote:
>My favorite device of this type goes something like:
>
>take a power strip.  shove a solid-state relay in it, capable of being
>switched by RS-232 voltage and capable of switching the wall
>voltage/current going through the power strip.  connect that to gnd +
>DTR on a serial port, plug that into a box.  then use a little program
>like the one at http://www.demetriou.com/~cgd/powercycle.c to toggle
>the DTR.
>
>the one big drawback is that it's one serial port per device to power
>cycle.  8-)

I've had success doing something similar using the bits on a parallel
printer port to directly drive the solid state relay. They may not have the
drive of a serial port control signal, but it's enough to turn on a solid
state relay beefy enough to handle the power for all the bells in 3
buildings of an Istanbul high school ;-)

(Don't remember where I got the relay - I think my brother had it in his
basement)