I want to tie two computers now running on DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1 together so that I can exchange files. Sort of been out of this for awhile, but what do I need here? My very old computer book says a pair of old fashioned Eithernet cards, Lanstastic and telephone line between the two places will work. That seems awfully simple to me.

What really is up?

Wm.

Are these machines close together physically?

Network setup under DOS is great for fast transfer, although from what I understand the DOS drivers require quite a bit of low memory.

For FAT16 drives, the old DOS interlnk program and crossover connection via the parallel ports is more than adequate.

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The two computers are about 50 feet apart. Only thing common to both of the buildings is a telephone line and the 220VAC lines.

Can Interlink be run that far? I can solder up some cables to connect into the serial ports, but how many wires would be required between the two places, 4, 6, or 8?

Wm.

Parallel port transfer is probably 4X faster than serial port. Here's a pinout (of sorts)

The cable itself can be picked up pretty cheaply most places - 'parallel file transfer cable' - you'd only need one piece, the rest could be straight 25 pin extensions.

Not sure if 50' is doable - I'd tend to think so.

The interlnk connection works much like a network - the slaved drives are seen as removable drives by the master system. There's other software that just allows file transfers.

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Jboy, I wouldn't push parrallel beyond 15'. Serial will work.

I'm not entirely convinced that sneaker net isn't the most efficient technique here.

Another old time favorite file transfer program is LapLink. At 50 feet I think only a serial connection is reliable enough.

All of the methods don't allow the remote computer to do any worthwhile work while waiting to transfer data. The best thing would be a real network that uses very low resources such as Lantastic or some other network such as Moses (the Promised LAN). I think these use less than 100K of ram. MOSES uses a two pair telephone type connection, Lantastic uses an ethernet style card.

Both computers have near identical software loaded up on them. Have been running a floppy disk back and forth between the two locations every day, and have worn out drives at rate of about every 9 months. Has gone on too long.

I have onboard both computers FastLynx by Sewell. Use it for hooking into a laptop. Per the booklet, it days that parallel connections is faster, but unrelible for greater than 50 feet. It indicates serial port good for up to 125 feet. I have been using their software under serial connection for past couple years, and gotten used to the rate of transfer. Thus am considering running an aerial cable between the two buildings and connecting the two computers and using Fastlynx for the transferrs.

Wm.

I've used serial connections with a 100' cable and no problems.

As to the reliability of a serial connection, I recently installed Win98se on one of my laptops with interlnk/intersvr. The install ran for about 30 hrs (thirty hours) and went off without a hitch. Copying the Win95 folder from a 95b cd to my other laptop ran about 5 hrs.

I use a 9pin to RJ45 adapter on one machine and a 9pin to RJ45 null modem adapter on the other. An old cat3 cable connects the two.

It's not fast but it is easy and free. Transferring a floppy size set of files should only take a few minutes.

Skip

Sure, serial is slower - I use a parallel connection frequently, dumping the Win98 CABs to another machine takes about an hour. I wasn't sure about the length (18' is the most I've ever tried) - it does sound like serial is the way to go, short of setting up a DOS LAN

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