I was hoping to teach a 12 year old some basics of programming and computer
interfacing. Is there a basic board out there that lets me hook up a pc to a
circuit/bread board?
Altronics (
http://www.altronics.com.au) have a couple of kits.
An I/O adapter kit for PCs which connects to a serial port . K-2850 @ $59.00
Input buffer and relay driver kit for connecting to the I/O adapter kit . K-2852 @ $34.95
PC stepper motor controller kit that connects to the parallel port K-2835 @ $32.50
The book "Controlling Your World With Your PC" by Paul Bergsman
ISBN 1 878707 15 9 tells how to connect and control various things using the
printer/parallel port.
Some of the items are
7 segment LED displays
LCD display
relays
speech output from a parallel port
audio tones
controlling a DAC
Controlling 5 and 6 wire stepping motors
controlling DC servo motors
pulse-width modulation
and much more.