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??)

[Tomas]

I have a a500 4.5megs of ram with kick 2.x and a hd.. I only get 31250 using null modem cable and amiga explorer. What are your settings, specs and such?? like colour mode, kickstart and so on..

Anything over 31250 gives me errors when transferring bigger files.

I think i have only tried copying from pc to the amiga though...

[zipper]

I use 115200 but I have 060 accelerator and GFXcard so the mobo can concentrate to the serial port. Without GFX card perhaps 1/2 or 1/3 of that but the less colours on the screen, the better speed. 320x240 2 colours maximizes what you can get.

[orange]

baudbandit.device should help but it requires registration. I've tried almost everything (on 68000 A500) but, IIRC 38400 was maximum that didn't have errors or maybe 19200, cant remember.
BTW, I'd reccomend using ZOC and zmodem on win for comm.

[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. ;-)

[CodeHunter]

I have an Amiga 600HD, and with default setting of resolution 640x400, 4 colors, the maximum throughput I can use is 38400. I can choose higher, but the transfer stalls in between.

Any ideas how can I speed up transfer speeds? A 880K ADF takes  almost 3 minutes! :-?

Also note, that I use a USB->Serial converter to connect the Serial cable from Amiga to my Laptop, because my Laptop does not have a Serial port. Could it be because of this?

Thanks again in advance.

[Noster]

Hi,

I used TwinExpress (found at Aminet) to transfer files between an Amiga and a PC and it worked perfect with 115200 baud. The only problem is that TwinExpress runs from DOS and isn't able to work with "modern" PC-hardware, i.e. you need a Pentium 1 or 486 PC.
With two A1000 a friend and I were able to transfer files with 190000 baud using an unshilded cable of 20 m length with errors !!!
But TwinExpress doesn't use the serial.device, this software works direct with the underlying hardware (the CIA 8520) by bypassing the serial.device.

Noster

[alexh]

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?

[amyren]

I remember back when I still used my A500HD (hacked into a desktop case) running. I tried many serial device drivers, also baudbandit.device.
But as I remember back then, baudbandit was not developed any more, and I started using the New8N1.device instead.
I think this is free software, check aminet.

[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)