2 Feb
1998
2 Feb
'98
1:05 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Max Eskin once stated:
(Sigh!) Well, it seems that I need more explanation. I was wondering if
this would be a more resource-conserving way to do it, and
technologically easier. I would do this with network cards if I had
them. Serial ports might be good, as well as parallel. Is there a way to
make the computer do TCP/IP via serial or parallel port?
Yes. In fact, you can (in theory at least) run TCP/IP over any physical
medium (and yes, there are people trying to get TCP/IP running over SCSI as
strange as that may seem. RFC2143 anyone?). PPP and SLIP are two methods
for sending TCP/IP over a serial line, and I think Linux even supports
TCP/IP over a parallel port, but that's non-standard (technically, so is
SLIP, but I'm being pedantic now 8-)
So, could you
please tell me, COULD I STICK A RIBBON CABLE INTO TWO DIFFERENT
MOTHERBOARDS AND PRETEND THAT THE MBs ARE CARDS OF EACH OTHER?
I'm not a computer engineer, but I would suspect the answers to be:
Short answer: no.
Long answer: yes, but ...
And that "yes, but ..." being that just sticking a ribbon cable between
the two mother boards may cause unspecified behavior. Basically, what
you're doing (more or less) is taking two single CPU systems and trying to
get them to do SMP (symetrical multiprocessing) and without some hardware
assistance, the best you can hope for is a hopelessly corrupted (RAM)
system and worse, you'll damage the two systems beyond repair.
I think someone mentioned that it could be done, but the ribbon cable has
to be between two cards (the hardware assistance) that handle the transfers.
-spc (ObCC: It may also be that TCP/IP may be overkill for what you want to
do (or just too big depending upon the system). You might want
to check out ftp://junior.apk.net/pub/users/drushel/twwmca and
see what Richard Drushel has done to get his Coleco Adam to
network with PCompatibles.)