Re: i've got the laptop

[<alez@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Glenn, hi folks,

I also keep trying to interface with a PC3100. At the moment, it has a 
512 Kb Kingston SRAM card, as well as a link cable I built thanks to Mr 
Leo Arendsen (hi chap). Unfortunately, the only PC I have around now is 
a laptop (I recently moved from Spain to the UK). As I've been doing 
the same stuff as you propose, I am sharing my experiences so far :-))

> The laptop is probably a good way to go. You may even be able to run 
Laplink on it, although this depends mainly on the speed of the laptop. 
I tried laplink on a Pentium 90 Toshiba laptop and found that it would 
run laplink OK when booted from a DOS 6.22 floppy, however it would not 
run laplink when the laptop was booted to DOS from Windows. An 800MHz 
laptop did not work at all. The laplink from the ftp site should be 
fine for this. 

That is interesting. My laptop is a Pentium 100 Toshiba and have had 
very very similar experiences with it. For example, sometimes I could 
use its serial port to program PIC devices with a serial programmer 
ONLY if I booted DOS 6.2 from a floppy, never Windows 95 DOS mode 
worked at all for that. The same programmer and programming software 
worked fine ALWAYS when I used a desktop computer. This laptop has a 
specially tricky serial port (not to mention the built 
in "soundblaster") AND Windows (even Windows' DOS) uses it in a 
different way than real DOS. So, expect anything if you connect to it 
anything but probably a mouse!

I've also tried to transfer Laplink from the PC3100 to it either under 
DOS, Windows' DOS and Windows and nothing worked (although I first 
activated the port and turned off the power saving mode). Next thing 
will be copying that laplink.exe (I've just downloaded following your 
advice, thanks for that) and hoping the communication between the two 
laplinks is established in a different way than when transferring the 
software itself. (Actually, I gess laplink interfaces DOS TTY at 2400 
bps and then switches to 9600 according to the sequence of commands you 
should type at the DOS prompt.)

> If you have an SRAM PCMCIA card, you could format it on the PC3100 
and then plug it into the laptop and transfer files, such as Telix. 
Have tried this on an 800MHz laptop running Win2000 and it did work 
(after the laptop loaded the drivers it needed). 

I am most interested in this, as I also tried it and it didn't work. I 
am actually a bit clueless at the moment. I have card services 
installed in my laptop, both under Windows 95 and under Linux, both 
working successfully with different cards. I plugged the Kingston SRAM 
card mentioned and then tried Windows, then Linux.

Windows: Type of card and memory size is identified, driver is 
automagically loaded and card is added to the list of devices. I guess 
the only thing left, as the card was already formatted in the PC3100 
and in fact contains a couple of files I created there (I've double 
checked and the files are still there), is that a new drive letter is 
created but there's nothing new under "My Computer".

Linux (the results are pretty similar, if you are familiar with 
Linux!): Type of card and memory size is identified, /dev/mem0 is 
linked to it properly, but "mount -t msdos -o 
fat=xx /dev/mem0 /somedir" won't work, it complains about the file 
system because it fails to recognize any file system there. I gess 
Windows does the same, and as it fails to recognize a file system 
there, it just doesn't create the additional drive letter.

So that's all so far! More news to come when I copy laplink.exe to my 
laptop and try to link those two beasts :-))

Cheers,


Alex




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