DNET woes
A couple of suggestions: 1) Wire your null modem cable to
connect pins 2, 3, and 7, NOT pin 1. Pin 7 is signal ground, and
provides the reference level for the other signal lines. Pin 1 is
frame ground, and should be connected to the shield of the cable, and
then only at one end. 2) Do NOT use any form of handshaking with
DNet, it provides its own. (You can set up a seven bit connection,
which will allow handshaking, but that simply slows things down. The
seven bit format is for folks who have to go through some obnoxious
types of communications links that force seven bits and
handshaking.) Also, make sure that you aren't checking for the
Carrier Detect (CD) on the DNet command line. That could be causing
you trouble. "-h1" will enable CD checking, as will the "-a" option.
The default is to not check.
Unfortunately, that's about all the advice I can give you. I've not
had the opportunity to check DNet in the Amiga-to-Amiga configuration.
(Only one Amiga, you see.) I use DNet all the time to connect to the Sun
Unix[tm] machine at work, though, so if you have any questions along those
lines, I'd be glad to help.
It would help if we knew what version of DNet you were using. The
latest version that I know of is 2.20. However, through a true comedy of
errors, the included binaries announce themselves as v2.10, but are really
v2.13! Oh, the default for CD checking changed in v2.10 or 2.13. It was
default on, now it's default off.
Since you are connecting two Amigas together, you might consider
using ParNet over the parallel port, rather than DNet over the serial port.
ParNet is *much* faster — about the same as a floppy, or so I'm told. If
you need to use NetKeys, there is a version that works over ParNet. It's
likely not here yet (it's quite new), so I'll upload it when I upload this
note.
Whew, this is getting longer than I'd thought it would. Hope I've
helped.