Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!uplherc!esunix!blgardne
From: blgardne@esunix.UUCP (Blaine Gardner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Net: parallel port handler
Message-ID: <1831@esunix.UUCP>
Date: 26 Feb 90 02:16:39 GMT
References: <1590@sas.UUCP>
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation
Lines: 47

From article <1590@sas.UUCP>, by walker@sas.UUCP (Doug Walker):
> In article <1163@mindlink.UUCP> a186@mindlink.UUCP (Harvey Taylor) writes:
>>   Interesting, but...these are point to point setups. What about more
>> than two machines.
> 
> Matt has mentioned being able to do this by making special cables and 
> forming a ring network on the parallel ports.  Nobody's tried it, though,
> since he only has two machines.

If you need some testing help, I've got 3 Amigas fairly close to each
other that I could probably get going. It depends on the cabling
required though, as one of them is about 50-60 feet away from the other
two. I have had the parallel port network running with both of the
diskless machines (not at the same time of course), and the cables for
the standard PPN are already in place.


Oh, and I'd best (finally!) pass on some general PPN info that I got in
reply to a plea for help a couple of months ago. (Sorry to be so slow.)

I had the PPN working from the CLI, but no Drawer icons showed up in the
NET: Disk icon window. It turns out that the documentation has a couple
of glitches.

1) The docs say to name the icon you wish to use as the Drawer icon for
the remote disks "node.info", but it must really be named "node.rinfo".
Without the "r", it won't show up.

2) The docs say you need to "ASSIGN ROOT: <path>". Well, not quite. You
must assign ROOT: to a root directory. When assigned to "DH0:ParNet" I
couldn't get the icons to show up on Workbench. But when I switched the
assignment to "DH0:", it worked fine.

I stumbled across 2) myself, but credit goes to Dwight Blubaugh
(blubaugh@ucqais.uc.edu) and Francois Rouaix (rouaix@inria.inria.fr)
for pointing out 1) to me.

I have successfully run the PPN over 50-60 feet of cable between a 1000
and a 2000, and ~20 feet of cable to a 500. DiskSpeed reports about
25K/second which is twice as fast as a floppy on reads, and four times
faster on writes. This is with a Hardframe and Wren III drive (700-800K
per second reads), so it's probably the limit of the network.
-- 
Blaine Gardner @ Evans & Sutherland  580 Arapeen Drive, SLC, Utah 84108
Here:                                  There: (My Amiga running uucp)
blgardne@esunix.UUCP                   blaine@worsel.UUCP
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