Transfer files

[Darrin]

Been a while since I did it via a cable, but wouldn't SERNET be faster using a serial null-modem cable?  Should be able to grab one of them from any electrical shop (with gender changers/pin adapters if necessary).

[Darrin]

Cheers guys.  I wasn't sure how fast the parallel port was compared to the serial.  I used to use the serial port with Siamese to connect my old Amiga to old PC and that allowed file transfer and RTG graphics.  Ah, the good old days...

Edit:  The Siamese software even allowed you to network over the SCSI ports.  Never tried it myself.

[Darrin]

Hmm, how fast is one bit at a time versus 8 bits at a time.  I'm sorry the math is just too difficult.  Anyone got a calculator?

If the data transfer speed of the serial port is more than 8 times faster than the parallel port then...

As most Amigas seem to suffer from slow serial ports, I wasn't going to assume that the parallel port was up to snuff.  Is the A1200 port a newer EPP?

Edit:  A bit of Googling and it appears even the old parallel port would kick the Amiga's serial port into touch!

[Darrin]

Although in a closed loop, tightly controlled artificial environment the Amiga serial Theoretical Throughput is 115,200, one cannot forget the parity, stop bits and handshake requirements of the Amiga serial port which give it a maximum usable speed of about 57,600 bits per second vs the standard parallel port of 12,000,000 bits per sec (12,000 kbits per second).  The add-on Zorro cards were capable of more speed, but only a Silver Surfer Clockport adapter and Surf Squirrel were really available for the A1200.  The parallel port had 4 additional lines for control/handshaking and does not use the data lines for this purpose.  Hence, Darrin, if you divide 12,000,000 by 57,000 you end up with a wee bit more that an "8 times increase.". If one uses a faster processor and or a better serial port and parallel port card, you would in theory be pitted against a EPP port that can transfer at 2 Mbps.  

Again, I'm real bad with math; anyone got a calculator?

Yeah, I managed to work that out for myself with the use of a calculator once I looked at the max transfer speeds possible.  As "actual" speeds are the ones that count, the best benchmarks I could find for PARNET (after lots of digging) shows that it achieves between 33%-50% of the "theoretical throughput" using a 68030 (which still beats even the fastest Amiga serial port setting).  Shame I only ever used the port for my printer, but serial transfers still worked well when you consider the size of the files the average Amiga user has.

Don't become a teacher.  

[Darrin]

Those who can, do.

Those who can't, moderate Amibay, er... I mean teach.  

Those who can't teach, ask, "Do you want fries with that?"

LOL.  Those who can't learn have to cook the fries for the guy who asks "would you like fries with that?"  

I'm just glad my main Amigas have USB ports now.  All hail the FAT32 formatted memory stick!

[Darrin]

More work to making fries than flipping burgers.

Real men demand "chips" not fries.  

I have a diskless server with 5 TB of files on my home network and get to them with AmiFTP although I made a full CD of programs needed to get almost any Amiga online and BoingBagged to full working status (Poseidon, Miami, Picasso96, IBrowse, DOpus, MUI, etc.).  But a USB solution (I'm loving the Mini-Thylacine 4 port device) sure does wonders.

Mini-Thylacine?  Have I missed something?

I once installed OS3.9 on my A3000 via a serial link between it and my PC (the only CD ROM drive I had was on my PC tower).  It worked, but thank god I'll never have to do that again!

[Darrin]

Guy over on AmiBay making them & selling them.

Cheers.  I'll check that out.

[Darrin]

Genny_Flick makes them with smd components and using Poseidon all you need is the thylacine.device driver.  The original boards came with its own USB stack that works OK for un-acellerated  Amigas.

I've got a couple of Spiders in my A4000 and a Deneb in my A2000... one of these might be nice for my A3000.  Reading the link it seems it even works in the A500.  There's supposed to be a CPU/RAM card for the A500 due out from Elbox.  Add both to an A500 and it will make nice "wedge".

The Poseidon stack rocks.  How did the Thylacine's own stack compare?