I thought that was ECP, maybe I've got them switched around.

Edit: Gah, it's probably limit of 4 bit nibble mode on laplink/PLIP with a bidirectional universal cable, as opposed to one that doesn't work with SPP.... either that or I brained it at a time when everyone was acting really suspicious with throughput definitions and added the two sides of the duplex together, calling 10Mbit full duplex "20Mbit throughput" so automatically halved.

wierd_w wrote on 2026-03-19, 17:19:

Xircom Pocket Ethernet clone, that bridges raw ethernet frames over utility-set wifi, would be very nice actually. […]
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mdanh2002 wrote on 2026-03-19, 05:51:

I tested the ZIP100 on my Pentium III machine running Windows 98. 700KB/s was the best I could get. I didn't observe a lot of differences in performance between EPP and ECP mode, although they were certainly much faster than bidirectional mode. I tweaked a lot of BIOS settings and also tried Iomega DOS drivers, with similar results. I believe the slower speed compared to your test (1.4MB/s) is also because my disk/drive has been heavily used. A new old stock disk/drive might have better performance.

Btw, would anyone be interested in a Xircom parallel port Ethernet adapter clone, which now supports both Ethernet & Wifi? Maybe with a DOS utility (or front panel buttons) to configure the Wifi password?

Xircom Pocket Ethernet clone, that bridges raw ethernet frames over utility-set wifi, would be very nice actually.

Then one could use dos packet drivers, and use arbitrary protocols over it on vintage boxes.

You'd need to have a way to instruct the clone what SSID to bridge to, and what the key/password is though. The OG pocket ethernet knows of no such wizardry, and neither does most vintage dos networking.

You would need to call a configuration program first to initialize the XPE clone, with a wait for the association to happen, before loading the dos XPE packet drivers.

I think the association can be done later, independent from the packet driver loading process. The packet driver will just talk to the hardware to get the MAC address, which I can program my microcontroller to return anything. Association (SSID, password etc) can be done later using another CONFIG.EXE file. If association is not done, my hardware will just return timeout to the packet driver, and the actual error log into a log file (and available through the CONFIG.EXE utility).

I believe Xircom has driver for Windows 95, which can be made to work in Windows 98.

wierd_w wrote on 2026-03-19, 17:19:

Xircom Pocket Ethernet clone, that bridges raw ethernet frames over utility-set wifi, would be very nice actually. […]
Show full quote

mdanh2002 wrote on 2026-03-19, 05:51:

I tested the ZIP100 on my Pentium III machine running Windows 98. 700KB/s was the best I could get. I didn't observe a lot of differences in performance between EPP and ECP mode, although they were certainly much faster than bidirectional mode. I tweaked a lot of BIOS settings and also tried Iomega DOS drivers, with similar results. I believe the slower speed compared to your test (1.4MB/s) is also because my disk/drive has been heavily used. A new old stock disk/drive might have better performance.

Btw, would anyone be interested in a Xircom parallel port Ethernet adapter clone, which now supports both Ethernet & Wifi? Maybe with a DOS utility (or front panel buttons) to configure the Wifi password?

Xircom Pocket Ethernet clone, that bridges raw ethernet frames over utility-set wifi, would be very nice actually.

Then one could use dos packet drivers, and use arbitrary protocols over it on vintage boxes.

You'd need to have a way to instruct the clone what SSID to bridge to, and what the key/password is though. The OG pocket ethernet knows of no such wizardry, and neither does most vintage dos networking.

You would need to call a configuration program first to initialize the XPE clone, with a wait for the association to happen, before loading the dos XPE packet drivers.

I bought a few Trantor t358 Parallel to SCSI adaptor. Its just basically a printer connection to a box with a 50 pin SCSI connector with a single ncr 5380 with a few buffers. Believe it or not the drivers are built into windows NT/95 but never tried to do an install on it. If I remember right the dos drivers have a printer port tester that tells what modes it supports. It supports nibble, bi, epp and ecp so it might be a good device to test agents.

Be nice for an emulator for it. I think the drivers are built into windows 95 but not sure how buggy they are. Since it also supports nibble mode it should even work on other computers with a printer port as well.

Palmzip has the unique benefit of working on XT class machines, though.

I am working on a few boards that can perhaps be sold on eBay. The next version will use the Teensy microcontroller and supports ECP/EPP. I am also tempted to implement support for Atari parallel port (with PARCP), Amiga parallel port and maybe Laplink/Interlink parallel transfer.