hi if u cant find anything else check out this link http://www.vfxweb.com/index.php?maincateg=18 and mor specifically http://www.vfxweb.com/index.php?productid=9643 and http://www.vfxweb.com/index.php?productid=9642 :) Chris On 8/4/06, Mike Loewen <mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us> wrote:

Chuck Guzis wrote: Good point. I think that tar to a device requires a block device as a target, otherwise the tar would have to be staged to the local media, such as a hard drive or floppy, then streamed out thru a character device. I mentioned a cpio method, (find . -print|cpio -ov > /dev/lp) (dev may vary) which would go to either a block or character device. Jim

Chuck Guzis wrote: Yes, I mentioned that a few posts back -- though Jim reminded me that tar doesn't always handle symlinks well. It seems the most portable way of dealing with this problem on a variety of boxes -- since all you need on the "source" is the ability to cat(1) the tarball to a printer port. Unfortunately, you then need *one* box with hardware suitable to capture the incoming bytestream (i.e. *not* an SPP). Ideally, the source box would have MD5 or some other hash available so you could gain some reassurance that the received image agreed with the sent image.

Chuck Guzis wrote: I have a "vintage" IBM PS/2 data migration facility box with appropriate dates, so it is not too off topic. Anyone out there with a recipe or howto pointer to do this with various os varieties? Say linux 2 linux, or linux to dos? Also, I do not believe that the output to the printer port that Don suggested assumed the protocol that the parallel port data coupler uses is available. To fork the thread, I would be interested in whether the SCO parallel drivers might support the parallel port in such a way as to allow such coupling, (reads get data from port that is). Also what is required to do this simply or other wise on Linux (mentioned above). Even better, is there a small program to do this to a dos box, that can be used on dos / old windows boxes. Laplink had cables for the serial port, I don't recall if it had a parallel version that was reliable, as far as dos to dos data transfer. jim

On Wednesday 02 August 2006 03:24 pm, jim stephens 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. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

On Wednesday 02 August 2006 05:02 pm, Don Y wrote: That's a bit much. I have a couple of 9-to-25 pin size adapters that I need to check the connections on, and am not sure I have them in both genders. And some connector shells that'll take a 25-pin connector at each end, which I got seeing them as being handy to make adapters with. But the need for such stuff never arrived, so I never got around to building them, except for a couple of gender changers. If I ever do it'll be easy enough to have one test cable that's wired straight through and then make up any adapters I might need. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

On Wednesday 02 August 2006 05:44 pm, Don Y wrote: I could probably use some more than the couple I have, but there's been no real need lately. Just the things I was referring to. If you have that info in a file I sure wouldn't mind taking a look at it. Could come in handy some time. I know I've run across the odd bit now and then. Like the DEC printer that was the exact same mechanism as several others I'd seen around that time (Apple imagewriter? Some others I can't recall) but which required one of the handshake lines to be pin 10, or maybe it was 11. Nothing special about that printer, and it was really pretty slow compared to a lot of others out there (though not as noisy either), with one exception -- when you fed it a "*" it printed an actual 5-pointed star. Only printer I've ever seen that did that. :-) Yeah, I can see where it would. And this is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind when I wrote that. Just so. Those things stretching out horizontally behind an item of equipment sometimes doesn't work real well either, so a short cable at that end to let 'em hang might be another option. I did make a couple of gender changers that way, and it didn't seem too bad. Though that was a bunch of years ago and my eyes aren't what they used to be. The shells I have are two separate plastic bits, so I can leave them out of the way until fairly late in the process. Is there a standard about which parts of that stuff are supposed to get the screws and which are supposed to get the little threaded posts and such? I bumped into hassles with that already, too. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

On Thursday 03 August 2006 02:11 am, Don Y wrote: I can't say I've ever heard of that one before. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

On Wednesday 02 August 2006 05:08 pm, Chuck Guzis wrote: Interesting, I never did get around to verifying whether those were the same wiring or not. <...> I've always wondered how well that worked. And what sort of protocol it used. But I'm more interested in finding such for earlier stuff yet, like a similar product that I've heard of that would work with CP/M boxes, of which I have a number. Very little hardware was ever standardized with most of those, but just about all of them had at least one serial port, many had two. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Chuck Guzis wrote: Or, a small bit of hardware to mux the 8 data lines onto the incoming status lines (SPP). I.e. you only need *one* of these and *one* machine with this capability to handle a variety of "source" machines. Yes. Anything that provides a reasonably unambiguos "signature" I'd shy away from that. In addition to the issue of "what happens if you get N different results (N>2)", you are also vulnerable to any problems in the *mechanism*. E.g., if the I/F was not 8 bit clean, you would *think* you had a successful transfer and actually lost all the MSB's. Likewise if a signal is shorted in the cable, it will consistently yield the same (wrong!) results.