hmmm

[rokucheeba.livejournal.com]

my co-worker was telling me that a buddy of his did a file transfer
from one pc to another using a parallel cable.

can some one explain to me how this can be accomplished?

or if it's even possible - or is my co-worker a pathalogical liar?

Comments

aye

[synthe.livejournal.com]

it's definately possible. Win9x (dunno bout 2K/XP) has a feature called Direct Cable Connection, you can connect two computers with a parallel cable or serial cable amongst other things. Works quite well if all you're doing is moving files, it's not a true TCP/IP network if I remember correctly, it only shares hard drives.

[rhonan.livejournal.com]

Your co-worker is telling the truth. What he did is the same as connecting a null-modem cable between the serial ports of two computers. You take a cross-over parallel cable made for just this purpose and connect the printer ports. You then go into windows networking and set-up a direct cable connection between the two computers. It's an old trick that is still useful sometimes. Like with the laptop I use for ham radio stuff. The cardbus slots are fried so the only way to network the computer to another is by way of the serial port, that or a sneaker-net connection.

[saintrigger.livejournal.com]

Back in the day, we only had parallel cables for file transfers and WE LIKED IT! None of this gigawhatnot ethernet. :) It's called a direct cable connection or laplink.

Here is a link 4u!

http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/dccmain.htm

[eliz.livejournal.com]

*lol*

Loved your reply, and yes you're absolutely right. Back in the old days... actually up until today, parallel cables is how we'd ghost the machines in my boyfriend's PC lab. Ghost program is in DOS. ANY idea how long that takes going a>b b>c c>d for 16 computers? Agony. New computers arrived today that will be neatly networked :)

[rokucheeba.livejournal.com]

woow thanks mang/guys. that helped ALOT. i mean ALOT.

[wildkard.livejournal.com]

parallel/serial cables do work, but I don't recommend them as a file transferring step to most people because:

1) Not as many people have serial/parallel cables lying around that have the proper ends to what their computers need. Most people nowdays on have "their printer cable", and that "printer port socket" won't work well without an adapter or a new cable. Both of which cost about as much as cable #2 anyway.

2) Common Network cards give you either 10mbps or 100mbps. Those are great speeds when you consider that the typical parallel port only does 1.5mbps, and the serial port slower than that. Also, NICs are nearly as standard as those parallel ports are, so buying a $5 crossover cable (the same price as the comparable serial/parallel cable) makes more sense.

ok

[rokucheeba.livejournal.com]

i tried connecting both computers with an rj-45 but, realized i really don't know how to get them to connect to one another. i tried the files and settings transfer wizard but, came to a blank. (i run xp, btw.) sorry if this exasperates any of you - my networking skills are next to nil.

Re: ok

[oddball42.livejournal.com]

i prefer the ethernet to ethernet connection as the Paralell cable connection is soooooo sow in comparison. it can be done, but you need to have a cable for it, if you pin up cables untwist the center pair and you get a peer to peer cable, wich should work just fine with normal ipx/spx (i think thats what i did) or you can get a cheap ethernet hub because with multiple machines its always useful to have one.

[macdhomhnuill.livejournal.com]

I actually got a Win 95 laptop and an XP machine to talk to each other and transfer files between them over the parallel port. I didn't think THAT would be possible. :-)

[wildkard.livejournal.com]

Many things have changed between Windows versions... but the Direct Cable Connection protocols have remained the same (it *did* get a facelift for Win98 and since however :)

[nomad316.livejournal.com]

what you should do is make sure that ethernet cable is a cross over.then set up a static ip on both computers in the same subnet and reboot from there all you have to do is share the drive and your set