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Re: How to make plip actually work?



On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 02:42:09PM -0500, ScruLoose wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> The brief version of my question:
> 
> I'm trying to make a connection over plip (w/ laplink cable) between my
> desktop and a crusty old laptop.  plip loads fine on both machines, and
> packets are travelling fine from the desktop to the laptop.  Packets from
> the laptop to the desktop are lost something like 85%-100% of the time,
> with "plip0: transmit timeout(1,87)" error for the lost ones.
> How do I make this into a usable connection?

Which kernel versions are you using?  There was a problem in 2.4.18 with
plip:

    http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0202.3/0113.html

which I ran into once. The symptom was that machines with 2.4.18 could
transmit, but not listen properly.  I.e. always 100% loss.

> Should I be suspecting my laplink cable? (store-bought, brand-new, 'Belkin'
> brand)... if cable failure is a likely cause, I *can* probably exchange the
> thing and try again...  I suspect not, since the loss only ever turns up in
> one direction.

If it is a one-way error in the cable, reversing the cable should throw
some light on that...

I found that plip was very cpu intensive - even once I got the EPP/ECP
settings in the bios to agree with the kernel options. That took a bit
of work, as it did not seem to autodetect very well.

IIRC I ended up setting the bios to EPP and created this in
/etc/modutils/parport:

    options parport_pc io=0x378

[I know: this should be the default IO port. But I must have added it in for a
reason.  It's a loooong time ago though]

If everything else fails, you could fall back to a null-modem cable and
ppp.  Or apt-zip - if that is applicable for an initial install (never
used it myself).

HTH
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