VOGONS


First post, by feipoa

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This is probably a silly question, but is it possible, or is there anything out there already, which converts your computer's LPT parallel port into an ethernet adapter in Windows, albeit it at a reduced speed? The reason of why is unimportant; I am only wondering if it existed. There were a lot of weird and uncommon solutions back in the 90's.

I know there exists parallel port to ethernet print servers, but this adapter is intended to connect to a printer's LPT port and offers an ethernet port to connect to your router, e.g. https://www.cablewholesale.com/products/netwo … -74x5-04112.php , but I was wondering if there was a solution for the other direction?

There was also USB to ethernet adapters back in the USB 1.x days. Back at that time, there were a lot more solutions for the parallel port, like LPT CF card adapters (wish I wouldn't have sold mine), LPT mp3 players, Zip drives, printers, etc.

EDIT1:
This may be what I'm looking for, but with an RJ45 jack instead of the coax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_port#/ … net-adapter.jpg

EDIT2:
Wiki indicates that ECP ports run at 2.5 MB/s, while 10Base-T is only 1.25 MB/s (10mbps). So it seems that a parallel to ethernet adapter could have made sense for some situations.

Last edited by feipoa on 2018-02-17, 03:20. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 2 of 14, by xjas

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Definitely seen them, I might even have one around here somewhere. If I remember where I put it I'll check what it is.

A lot of these were marketed as laptop solutions back before onboard ethernet or PCMCIA slots were standard.

EDIT: turns out the one I thought I had is a parallel port SCSI adapter, not ethenet. I wish I'd known I had that a few weeks ago. Anyway... 😜

Last edited by xjas on 2018-02-17, 10:12. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 3 of 14, by feipoa

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Ahhh, the Xircom PE3-10BT... and it can be yours for only $192.50 + $128.26 USD. More than 10 available, I guess I'll buy 'em all at this sale price.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/XIRCOM-PE3-10BT-Used … c0AAOSwVaVZyQEm I'm obviously joking.

Have you bothered to benchmark yours?
The theoretical max speed of ECP is 2.5 Mbytes/sec
The theoretical max speed of 10Base-T is 1.25 Mbytes/sec
The theoretical max speed of the 16-bit ISA slot is 15.9 Mbytes/sec,

so the speeds of each connection is greater than that of the 10Base-T. Would be interested to benchmark your Xircom vs. that of a 10Base-T ISA card with, say, LAN Speed Test from totusoft.com

EDIT:
Looks like some company called Zebra also made them, but in an internal form-factor. These look neat, https://www.ebay.com/itm/Grade-A-Zebra-Ethern … FZTKl8#shpCntId

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Reply 4 of 14, by cyclone3d

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Zebra is a label printer company. Those are basically a card to add network connectivity to some older large production label printers.

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Reply 5 of 14, by luckybob

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feipoa wrote:
Ahhh, the Xircom PE3-10BT... and it can be yours for only $192.50 + $128.26 USD. More than 10 available, I guess I'll buy 'em a […]
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Ahhh, the Xircom PE3-10BT... and it can be yours for only $192.50 + $128.26 USD. More than 10 available, I guess I'll buy 'em all at this sale price.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/XIRCOM-PE3-10BT-Used … c0AAOSwVaVZyQEm I'm obviously joking.

Have you bothered to benchmark yours?
The theoretical max speed of ECP is 2.5 Mbytes/sec
The theoretical max speed of 10Base-T is 1.25 Mbytes/sec
The theoretical max speed of the 16-bit ISA slot is 15.9 Mbytes/sec,

so the speeds of each connection is greater than that of the 10Base-T. Would be interested to benchmark your Xircom vs. that of a 10Base-T ISA card with, say, LAN Speed Test from totusoft.com

EDIT:
Looks like some company called Zebra also made them, but in an internal form-factor. These look neat, https://www.ebay.com/itm/Grade-A-Zebra-Ethern … FZTKl8#shpCntId

yea that price is a bit out there. I was going to comment that I sold 8 of them for $125 a pop and they went FAST. Then I remembered they were SCSI to Ethernet, and that really isn't applicable here. Do you not have space for an ethernet card? I have a pile of 8bit ones that are just collecting dust.

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Reply 6 of 14, by Hamby

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I think I may have one of those Xircoms somewhere... then again I may have thrown it away, as I never got it to work.
Try this...
https://www.cbmstuff.com/proddetail.php?prod=WiModem232OLED
oops... that's a serial port adapter. I overlooked "parallel" somehow.
I've got a similar one, also a serial port bluetooth adapter. Both work "okay"

Reply 7 of 14, by feipoa

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Hamby wrote:
I think I may have one of those Xircoms somewhere... then again I may have thrown it away, as I never got it to work. Try this.. […]
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I think I may have one of those Xircoms somewhere... then again I may have thrown it away, as I never got it to work.
Try this...
https://www.cbmstuff.com/proddetail.php?prod=WiModem232OLED
oops... that's a serial port adapter. I overlooked "parallel" somehow.
I've got a similar one, also a serial port bluetooth adapter. Both work "okay"

Those are kinda neat as well, but isn't 115,000 baud the max speed, which translates to 0.014 Mbyte/sec. Ouch.

Luckybob, I assume those SCSI to RJ45 adapters you sold were intended for Mac's? Seems some people used them on their SE/30's. Were there any Windows drivers? Do you still have one?

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 9 of 14, by feipoa

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derSammler wrote:
I have a D-Link DE-620CT, which works quite well. Even has RJ45 and BNC. […]
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I have a D-Link DE-620CT, which works quite well. Even has RJ45 and BNC.

d_link_de_620-t.jpg
(not my picture)

This devcie seems a little particular about EPP specification.

EPP Mode DE-620 series adapters support version 1.7 EPP specification. This means you may achieve up to 4 times the throughput o […]
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EPP Mode
DE-620 series adapters support version 1.7 EPP specification. This means you may achieve up to 4 times the throughput of either uni-directional or bi-directional ports. Unfortunately the Compaq Aero (and others) uses 1.9 EPP and is not backward compatible with DE-620’s [and some other vendors’ products] EPP mode. There are no plans at present to use version 1.9 EPP. If after setting EPP mode the DE-620 setup program still detects Uni/Bi direction, it will probably not support EPP on your computer.

Most notebooks enable EPP either with a device driver / utility or some change in the CMOS. For example Compaq requires the LPT port to be set to LPT2 to enable EPP, AST have a utility available. Consult your manual on how to enable EPP.

ECP Mode
This type of parallel port is becoming more common to support very high speed transfer. Unfortunately it is not suited to network devices such as the D-Link DE-620. If your notebook uses ECP please try to disable and set to Standard, bi-directional or EPP instead. Most recent notebook models have this kind of port (see note above)

Select the fastest mode which will work reliably.

Could you benchmark it in comparison to a more standard 3Com 10Base-T ISA ethernet card?

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Reply 10 of 14, by derSammler

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feipoa wrote:

Could you benchmark it in comparison to a more standard 3Com 10Base-T ISA ethernet card?

I don't really have a setup that would allow that. I'm using the DE-620 on a Compaq LTE Lite 4/25. There's no ISA slot for a comparison and I have no similar spec'ed PC, only ones that are way faster or way slower.

Reply 11 of 14, by luckybob

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feipoa wrote:

Luckybob, I assume those SCSI to RJ45 adapters you sold were intended for Mac's? Seems some people used them on their SE/30's. Were there any Windows drivers? Do you still have one?

mac and amiga, I never found any, and no.

IBM esque machines almost always had a slot for networking and never had scsi so the demand was practically zero.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 12 of 14, by matze79

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http://lallafa.de/blog/amiga-projects/plipbox/

You can also use a PLIPBox for MS-Dos there are PLIP Packet Drivers.

Or take a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a Serial Shield.
So you can connect your Retro PC via SLIP with the Raspi, and the Raspi will route packets to Wlan.
For Slow Machines you can also run a Proxy intercepting http on the raspi, that will reduce image sizes and remove ads etc.

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 13 of 14, by feipoa

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That's a neat little project! I didn't find any Windows drivers, so its use would be limited. He also referenced speeds of 235 KB/s, which seems slower than I'd be interested in, but better than nothing. Ideally, someone with time an initiative might want to take this project to the next level.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.