Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!samsung!think!mintaka!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!ukc!acorn!moncam!emmo
From: emmo@moncam.co.uk (Dave Emmerson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Hard Disk hookup via parallel port...?
Summary: Read it again
Message-ID: <349@marvin.moncam.co.uk>
Date: 5 Jan 90 14:46:18 GMT
References: <1676.259f524a@cc.helsinki.fi> <344@marvin.moncam.co.uk> <3932@orion.cf.uci.edu>
Organization: Monotype ADG, Cambridge, UK
Lines: 23


> >In article <1676.259f524a@cc.helsinki.fi>, stickler@cc.helsinki.fi writes:
> >> Does anyone know of a hard disk which can be hooked to a 
> >> non-hard disk laptop through the parallel (or serial) port.
> >> [deleted]
> >
> 
Several of the replies to this have been quite enlightening, though a few
seem to have missed the point that what was asked for was a tailor-made
*hard disk* as opposed to methods of linking to another PC.
That aside, I stand corrected.

A minor point, although the 8250 can run at 115KBaud, several clones can't
use it at that rate reliably. I don't know why not, 19.2K has usually
been enough for my purposes. I do know it's not simply the length of the
cable, nor the other connection. Certainly that's thrashing an old XT
with both comms and disk bios on the motherboard, and with a 6 MHz clock...
To a lesser extent, the same may hold true for parallel ports, here the
real problem is that the BIOS only expects to use it for output, so I
guess that with a suitable driver even some older machines might be able
to use them bidirectionally.

Dave E.