Neworking Computers Via Floppy Drive? 13
Mikey asks: "I remember seeing somewhere a device which looks like a diskette with wires at the back to connect to another computer. The reason I am asking is because the Cyprus Stock Exchange only allows access to its terminals via diskette. `If there is indeed a device which makes a connection between one computer and another via the floppy?"
i doubt it (Score:1)
You'd be much better of doing the ole Laplink via the parallel (or serial) port. Or you could always just get a stack of floppies.
Re:i doubt it (Score:1)
Re:i doubt it (Score:2)
The "thruoughput rate" of floppies is actually on the order of 500KB/sec, which isn't so bad compared to some popular networking media (10BaseT is only able to achieve about 600-700KB/sec once you have factored in protocol and collision overhaad).
Since other devices have been designed to adapt the floppy drive to alternative media (I'm thinking of memory sticks and the like) there shouldn't be too much problem doing the same thing for a networking medium.
The real problem would likely be how to present the interface to the rest of the system: would you use a new disk driver which would translate the local networking API or would the device itself present the network as a set of files on a virtual floppy disk? Either way you have some big headaches if you are going to support more than a few target systems.
Re:yes... (Score:1)
Re:i doubt it (Score:1)
There is no way that floppies have a throughput rate of 500KB/sec. If that were the case you could write a 1.44MB floppy in 3 seconds.
For example, using the generic floppy drive on a FreeBSD box I get 7709 bytes/sec:
$ dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/fd0 bs=1024 count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1048576 bytes transferred in 136.025992 secs (7709 bytes/sec)
I've done it once... (Score:1)
For the cost of an 8 port 10 mbit hub, some $20 network cards and some wires, don't you think that would be a better solution??
"There's a party," she said,
"We'll sing and we'll dance,
It's come as you are."
Re:i doubt it (Score:2)
Re:i doubt it (Score:1)
DOS systems seem to be able to write to floppies faster than anything else. I think the controller hardware can make a difference too; my very first XT had a floppy controller that seemed a lot faster to me than other systems of that era. It was critical because there wasn't a hard drive.
SmartDisk FlashPath (Score:2)
Oh yeah, it'll run you US$89.95 at the SmartDisk store [yahoo.com] with a 16Mb SmartMedia card, or you can head over to PriceScan [pricescan.com]'s Digital Film Readers [pricescan.com] section and find one for under US$60 without a card.
Some day I hope to have a
mwahahahaha (Score:1)
Arrggghh - Cyprus! (Score:2)
I once had a request from a UK company for someone to link the two Cyprus sales offices, one in the Greek area, the other in the Turkish area. We had to install a link between the two with a pair of routers, but no-one was allowed to speak to both offices. The routers were already on site, but no-one had got round to configuring them properly. It was planned to route other protocols over them as well, meaning a lot of extra configuration. To fufill the contract we had to send one engineer to one site, configure that router, then send someone else to the other site to do the same, and then hope that everything worked.
Under the bizarre constraints of this contract, I don't think anyone put in a bid. Would you?
IP over SneakerNet? (Score:2)
It's no longer called "Sneakernet" (Score:1)