[Techtalk] Null modem cable

[Rasjid Wilcox]

On Thursday 18 December 2003 08:15, Travis Casey wrote:
> Another way to connect is through a laplink cable and the PLIP module;
> this gives considerably higher speed than you can get on a serial
> cable.  I haven't done this in years, though, and don't know how well
> supported it is any more.  There's a mini-HOWTO on it from 1998:
>
>   http://tldp.org/HOWTO/PLIP.html

I used PLIP to transfer files from an friends old laptop to my desktop (so I 
could then burn it onto CD) to quite good effect less than 12 months ago.

The main gotcha is to make sure you are running exactly the same kernel on 
each machine (and therefore the same version of PLIP).  [Well, I guess you 
can try it with different kernels - it does sometimes/often(?) work -  and 
then if it doesn't seem to work, do any kernel installs required to get the 
same on both machines.]

Note that using PLIP is very slow, and due to the amount of interrupts, in my 
experience, renders both machines unusable while the transfer is in progress.  
Transfer over a serial line would of course be even slower.

Personally, unless one of the machines in question is a laptop (and therefore 
getting a NIC gets a little more expensive) I would follow Elizabeth's advice 
and buy two cheap NIC's and either a hub + cables or a cross-over cable.

Cheers,

Rasjid.

-- 
Rasjid Wilcox
Canberra, Australia (UTC +10 hrs)
http://www.openminddev.net