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This article was posted to the Usenet group alt.hackers in 1995; any technical information is probably outdated.

Re: OK, I need some help on this one...


Article: 7578 of alt.hackers
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
From: cs92dy@exeter.ac.uk (D.Young)
Subject: Re: OK, I need some help on this one...
Message-ID: D6Euzv.HpA@exeter.ac.uk
Organization: University of Exeter, UK.
Date: Sun, 2 Apr 1995 14:02:18 GMT
Approved: The Little People.
Lines: 31
Status: RO

In article <3li9op$hg5@access1.digex.net> mikelea@access1.digex.net
(Michael Lea) writes:
>Can someone tell me which pins to switch to make a serial cable into a
>null-modem cable?  Then I can use it in my...
>ObHack:  We have a sexy 1200dpi scanner in our computer lab at the school
>I work at.  However, the machine it is hooked to has a crappy VGA
>monitor, and it isn't on our campus wide network.  However, the machine
>next to it is...so, my plan is to write a simple program in C that will
>send the flow from the serial port to a file in my network
>directory...then I can go across campus to the fast machine with the SVGA
>monitor and do some computer art!
>	--mikelea

A gopher search (veronica) for 'null cable' should hit a few times on
a common file 'nullcbl.zip' or some such which is about 5k long and
contains details for a range of null parallel and serial cables.

ObHack:

It took me a stupidly long time to realise it, but a 25pin male -> 25pin
female fully connected lead is and extension lead for both parallel and
serial connections, just flip it end over end to change over.

Make up short (3m) null modem and null parallel leads, and a couple of
fairly long fully connectedleads and most machines can be connected together
with problems, and when they are not in use you can shove your noise
clapped out dot matrix printer (if you have one too) well away from your
computer.

Oh and if you are making up cables I really recommend the sub-microminiture
or whatever crimp fit ones. About 4 million times quicker than trying to
solder of of those tiny connections on the damn fiddly stranded wire.



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