thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (12/07/90)
bscott@isis.cs.du.edu (Ben Scott) in <1990Dec7.033228.29451@isis.cs.du.edu>
writes:
I'm getting a UnixPC soon, in a swap for a base Amiga 1000 (not a bad
[...]
I'll be wanting to run DNet on it, of course, ...
[...]
Also, since my Amiga has only the one serial port, it'd be nicer if I
could somehow get Parnet running on the 7300 (it DOES have a parallel
port, standard so far as I know).
[...]
Welcome to the club! But, seriously, you'd be best advised taking this
question to unix-pc.general; the 3B1's present newsgroup hierarchy comprises
unix-pc.general, unix-pc.sources, unix-pc.uucp, and unix-pc.bugs; the
"possible" future hierarchy will be comp.sys.3b1 and comp.sources.3b1 if the
voting succeeds, and will be servicing Motorola 63x0 and Convergent Miniframe
users, too. The reason for the change is too many cross-posts from 286/386/486
groups thinking the "PC" in "UNIXPC" means a DOS-based newsgroup whereas the
3B1/UNIXPC is a 68010-based virtual-memory demand-paged "personal" UNIX box.
Many 3B1/UNIXPC/PC7300 owners ALSO own Amigas (myself included), so you should
feel right at home in the 3b1 newsgroup. And Mike Ditto (one of the members
of the Amiga SVR4 port team) has posted a lot of goodstuff to the 3B1 sources
group over the years (material is archived at osu-cis and other sites).
The parallel port on the 3B1/UNIXPC/PC7300 is a "true" standard Centronics
parallel port and will NOT work bi-directionally as does the Amiga's parallel
port (on the Amiga, the I/O lines can be individually programmed as to their
I/O "direction"). The 3B1's port is serviced by a 74LS374 driver (I'm looking
right at the schematic) whereas the Amiga's parallel port is a programmable
I/O interface.
As far as interconnecting the two systems (Amiga and 3B1), there are several
possibilities, the first two of which I've personally verified:
- Amiga serial port to 3B1 serial port up to 19.2 Kbaud
- Amiga serial port to StarLAN RS-232 NAU (1BASET) to 3B1's NAU; I
demo'd this configuration at FAUG earlier this year when demo'ing
the AmigaUUCP package; still limited to 19.2 Kbaud
- Amiga Ethernet (TCP/IP) MAU to {backbone} to 3B1 Ethernet (TCP/IP) MAU,
but this pre-supposes you have the hardware and software for the Amiga.
- Amiga SCSI to Adaptec "Nodem" to Ethernet to 3B1 Ethernet; but you will
HAVE to write your own software for the Amiga side
You can also transfer files using 5-1/4" (320K or 360K DS/DD) and 3-1/2" disks
(720K DS/DD); the 3B1 also reads/writes 400K 5-1/4" and 800K 3-1/2" disks.
Several SCSI projects are underway for the 3B1 (one on the East Coast, one in
California), so there's a chance one "may" be able to use something like the
"SCSInet" to interconnect the two systems in the not-too-distant future.
BTW, when posting to unix-pc.* (and cross-posted to comp.sys.att) do NOT
restrict distribution to "usa" as you did for your present post; a LOT of
users are in Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, England, Europe, Japan
and Australia (which is but another reason for the proposed newsgroup change:
to facilitate distribution).
Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]