Comments on using Sys::PortIO module

[EM]

I am working on a home automation project. As part of my project, I need to
do the following;

- control 4 irrigation zones
- control the fan motor in the furnace

- monitor the position (locked/unlocked) of the dead bolts on specific doors
- monitor garage door position (close if necessary)
- monitor rain sensor
- monitor HVAC with a home brew system (heating, cooling and/or fan on)
- monitor certain doors for open or closed position
I have built a I/O card based on the Intel 8255 PPI chip
(http://www.boondog.com) and will be using it on a RedHat Fedora 2 system.
The card was tested with a simple Qbasic program many years ago on a very
old (386) machine and it worked great. The card uses several different port
addresses, but I will be using port address 300h to access this card.

I am wondering if anyone has had any experience using Sys::PortIO module to
talk to this type of device or doing something similar to this. If you
have, would you mind sharing your experiences.

TIA, Eric.