Amiga Explorer is 8x faster than I thought! (serial port question)

[mr_a500]

I've been using Amiga Explorer to copy from my dying A500 HD->Windows craptop->new A500 HD. Since the max serial setting in serial prefs is 31250, I thought my max transfer speed through Amiga Explorer was 19200. Copying over 1Gb at this speed was painful!

Then I got bored from waiting forever and decided to try 115200. It worked perfectly! What a huge difference! I feel like a chimp for not trying this before. So now when Windows says it will take 1 hour to copy (which means 4 hours) it actually takes 30 minutes!! (stupid Windows can't calculate)

So my question is: What is the maximum serial transfer speed on an A500? (..and why do serial prefs - even in 3.9 - have max 31250??)

[mr_a500]

@Tomas

My A500 has a 33 Mhz 020, 8Mb Fast RAM, 2Mb chip, 3.0 ROMs and my new HD is 5400 RPM 2.5" 40Gb. The dying HD is 4200 RPM 2.5" 20 Gb.

When I first tried 115200 (PC to Amiga), I had my 16 colour WB in the foreground and still surprisingly had no problems. It was exactly 8x faster and none of the files were corrupt. To be safe, I now flip to a lower colour screen while copying. I copied about 500Mb now.

Copying from dying HD to PC, I have started getting "Unable to read from COM port" type errors in Windows. Changing screenmode to lower colours has no effect. I just have to keep trying and eventually it goes. When I copy the files back to my new HD, I have absolutely no problem.

I was hoping I would be able to use the new 115200 dial up internet we have here, but I just tested 57600 with IBrowse and it goes super slow. Flipping to a low colour screen causes it to go fast again, but I can hardly browse web pages from a 2 colour screen. Oh well, I appear to have hit the limit with my A500. ;-)

[mr_a500]

Just out of interest... why didnt you think about buying a $10 SCSI card and plugging your hard drive directly into your PC and it would take seconds to copy?

$10 SCSI card? My HD is IDE. I'm using a Windows notebook to copy and it isn't mine anyway. (work computer)

Believe me, I've already thought of the options and didn't just copy 1Gb over 19200 for fun ;-). I tried buying a 2.5" cable with connectors for 2 drives, but nobody sells them. I tried buying a 3.5" to 2.5" adapter to put both 2.5" drives in my Amiga (have one 2.5" and two 3.5" interfaces), but the only store that sold them doesn't sell them now. (Radio Shack had it, but changed name to Circuit City and removed all RS products)