Ami to PC Linkup

[drHirudo]

I use PC2Amiga via Parallel cable now. It gives me speed about 40KB/s which is not that bad. The computer shop didn't have parallel-parallel cable, so I bought two Parallel printer cables, cut them and built one Parallel-Parallel cable, after consulting PC2Amiga manuals how to connect the wires. It took me some time though, to figure out which colored wire is for which pin number, and used a speaker for this. Before that I used NetworkPC which is the commercial version of PC2Amiga, and comes with cable, but I didn't have the cable, so I used serial cable which gave me a speed of about 8KB/s, which for small files was ok, but for the big ones was a nightmare.
 One strange feature to me is that transfering files from the PC to the Amiga is slower than the other way around, despite the fact the PC is much more powerful (through the serial and the parallel conection as well). Not sure why this. Also you can't browse the Amiga directories from the PC side, but that's not a big problem, since you can copy files to the PC from the Amiga.

[Will-i-am]

Well, I have tried many weeks to make the ethernet deal work and I guess I'm a moron because even with help from folks here it doesn't work. I do everything the way I'm told, notice that there appear to be some subtle differences in what I'm supposed to see along the way, do some "pinging" and such and belly up at the router. Nothing. So sharing files between my A4000T and a PC consists of only those files which will fit onto a DD disk....since the tower doesn't have a DS/HD drive and so far I can't find out how to get a high density drive to work on the tower. Frustrating as hell, but that's one reason why so many people with Amigas throw in the towel and use emulators on fast PCs. I guess the bottom line is that if you have time to study up, a good memory or good note taking ability ethernet is obviously the best way to go for so many reasons, but starting from scratch can be a hair-tearing pain in the butt. Still, I will continue to use my wonderful "miggies" until the last one smokes up and falls down dead. When they work, it's like great sex. When they don't work, it's like living with my ex-wife.

[lordv]

@ dxrdx

I'm NOT using 3com cards. I have told that there is 3com driver, which appears to solve the problem.
I'm using cnet CN40 card.

[lordv]

What about A1200, you need harddrive (of course!) and Miami. Cnet driver is downloadable from aminet, which works as well with many other cards (except for 3com).
On a4000 I'm using some EB920 card with some drivers from miamidx distribution, everything OK.

[dxrdx]

@lordv

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I read your message little bit
too fast...

Maybe I'll check by myself which NICs the 3COM
driver pack supports :-).

@drHirudo

It isn't really about the PCs raw computing power, the parallel ports are just different. Try changing LPT port setting in BIOS from EPP to ECP and visa versa, you should notice some changes in the transfer performance.


Mikko

[drHirudo]

While on this topic:
Does somebody knows if it is possible to have PPP connection to a Windows PC from Amiga, but instead of using null-modem cable (I have only 3-wire one)to use the 4-Wire LapLink parallel cable? I.E. if drivers/configurations for this exist?

[jjans]

drHirudo wrote:
I use PC2Amiga via Parallel cable now. It gives me speed about 40KB/s which is not that bad.

Interesting. Sounds like another project for me...
What Amiga are you using?
How long is the connection from your Amiga to your PC?

Can you connect to internet via TCP with the Amiga?

[drHirudo]

Interesting. Sounds like another project for me...
What Amiga are you using?
How long is the connection from your Amiga to your PC?

Can you connect to internet via TCP with the Amiga?

My Amiga is standart A4000D with 040/25Mhz and 16MB FastRAM.

Well I cut the first cable in about 20 cm from the printer part and the second in about 20 cm from the parralel part, so all in all the final cable must be as long as a single cable which on the box says 1.8m (haven't metred it though).

If I can use TCP on the Amiga via this cable I would turn off the PC monitor and use the machine only for gateway. :-D
Theoretically it's possible but in practice I wasn't able to find the right software for this, neither on the PC side nor on the Amiga.

Also PC2Amiga crashes sometimes when I use Dopus with the local Amiga drawers (very rarely but still), while NetworkPC never crashed so far in usage for about 2 and half months. But I used different connections so a comparasion is irrelevelant.