2 Aug
2006
2 Aug
'06
2:08 p.m.
On 8/2/2006 at 3:46 PM Roy J. Tellason wrote:
I can't speak to the reliability of it, but it did
indeed have a parallel
option, which of course required a different special
cable. Never used
it here though.
I have a Laplink "octopus" (well, a sexapus, anyway), one DB9 female, DB25
female and DB25 male on each end. Handles both serial and parallel
"nibble" transfers. The thing will also work wtih the Microsoft Interlink.
If you've got a bidirectional printer port on the receiving PC, there's no
software handshake necessary--the sender asserts STROBE and the receiver
acknowledges it with ACK. In this case, SCO can't tell the receiving PC
from a plain old parallel interface printer. Transfers
are 8 bits at a
time.
If you fool much with vintage PC's with parallel ports, you really should
have some capture software kicking around-. Often, the printer port is the
easiest and fastest way to get data out of a system that has no other
networking capability.
Anent that, I still have a copy and manual for "The $25 network" that
imprelments rather primitive peer-to-peer printer and serial port
networking over DOS.
Cheers,
Chuck