From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-Id: <200204231037.LAA22649@cthulhu.dircon.co.uk> Subject: Re: [9fans] An old laptop In-Reply-To: <20020423121833.I13019@cackle.proxima.alt.za> from Lucio De Re at "Apr 23, 2002 12:18:34 pm" To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu From: Digby Tarvin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 11:37:36 +0100 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 79ebdb0a-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Lucio De Re: > There are other parallel to ethernet adapters, Accton, for one, > used to build such an item. True, but while I could justify spending a little spare time fiddling with it as a learning exercise, I would have a bit of trouble justifying spending any money on this old machine. > I don't like the PC parallel port, however, it seems to be quite > weakly supported all round. My limited electronic knowledge does > not explain why, for example, my WinNT box has so much trouble > printing (admittedly past an HP scanner) - it positively grinds to > a ver slow pace. Early PC hardware did leave a lot to be desired. Unfortunately the machien pre-dates PCMCIA interfaces, so my only options are serial or parallel, and I don't think serial was much better... > Funnily enough, Russ Nelson, who was deeply involved with the > ancient packet drivers for ethernet adapters (anyone remember him? > he still hangs around lugnet and lego robotics, apparently) complained > that Xircom had broken the packet drivers licence by adopting them > for their adapters and refusing to disclose the details. Yes - the Xircom was the first encounter I had with packet drivers. With NCSA telnet, it made the Windows system usable as a network terminal. > Might explain why they insist on so much secrecy. > > Going back to Accton, someone recently mentioned finding the details > of just such a device from some site that archived drivers that > Accton had stopped providing, I don't recall the exact details, > but I can find out more if it helps. Sure - if I could work out how to program it, it could be useful for a whole range of old machines that have parallel ports but need a LAN interface. If you can point me at such an archive, that would be great. Regards, DigbyT -- Digby R. S. Tarvin digbyt@acm.org http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk