Tony Duell wrote:
So far the best I've come up with is to link
one machine to a palmtop
(HP95LX), then transfer the data to that, carry the palmtop to the other
machine and transdfer the data on. It's not ideal, but it does work.
Any other ideas?
Hmm, I've got a deep mistrust of any 'data over the mains' technology, but
might that be an option here? I assume *most* of your systems are physically
It's certainly something I'd considered.
plugged into the mains anyway, so it'd meet the
ideal requirement for no extra
cabling. Data rates presumably not lightning fast, of course...
Even those machines that are battery-powered are likely to be near a
mains socket, at least when I wasnt ot link them to another machine. So
that's not a problem.
Do true full-dupliex data-over-mains 'modems' exist? The chip I looked at
for this years ago seemed to be half-duplex only (it had a
trasnmit-enable input, and you were supposed to only have one
transmiotter enabled at a time out of all the chips on your mains
wiring).And that certainly wouldn't do here.
Sneakernetting data around isn't such a problem in a classic context, though -
That depends on how many machins you have to climb over to get between
the 2 you want to connect :-)
most old machines need you to be physically present in
order to do anything
(interesting) with them, so carrying the data back and forth isn't any great
hardship.
Some sort of RS232 star-based topology could be fun, though :)
I actually have soemthing called a Netcommander in front of me. It's a 16
port any-to-any RS232 switch (I also have smaller versions with 6 RS232
ports and 4 centronics ports). Since it allows different baud rates on
all the ports, it must make use of the flow control lines (otherwise what
happens if you try to send a lot of data from a 9600 baud port to a 300
baud one), but this might not be a problem if the 2 ports are set to the
same speed.
Anyway, the big prolem with it is that it's one small box, and it's only
16 ports. I could link 16 classic computers to it, but (a) I've got a lot
more than 16 machines and (b) it would involve cables running everywhere,
soemthing I need to avoid. It would be interesting to use that to link up
16 'favourite' machines, but that leaves a lot more that I have to think
of another (temporary) solution for.
-tony