At 05:17 PM 6/28/02 -0400, Hank Kohl K8DD wrote:
>At 6/28/02 03:44 PM -0400, Tom Ogburn wrote:
>>Thanks for all of the replies. I was "cleaning out the closet" and found
>>some networks cards and wondered if it were practical to hang on to those
>>and put them in NA computers for a multi-op thing and free up com ports.
>>
>>N4ZJ
>
>Tom ....
>
>I'd put the network cards in.
>
>It's a great way to get the upgrades to each NA computer.
>It's a great way to copy all the .qdf files to one PC and then merge them.
>It's a great way to get the log file and attach it to an email to send the
>results in.
>You could keep all the .qdf files for each of the NA computers on one
>computer.
> (Probably not a good idea, but you could.)
>And ....
>It beats the heck out of a floppy and "sneaker net".
>
>73 Hank K8DD
>
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I think ol' Hank is over-simplifying the case here.
Having NA computers on a network is a great way to accomplish all of the
administrative type tasks he describes. But how do you do it?
You can do it through Windows peer-to-peer file sharing and all, but that
accomplishes zero in the DOS environment for NA networking.
I recently read a piece off the CT reflector where the KC1XX station uses
something called PCTCP to set up peer-to-peer file sharing and management
in a DOS environment. K1EA has coded in a special hidden command line
switch which allows CT to talk to PCTCP rather than running K1TTT's NETTSR
to accomplish inter-station networking. I would love to do the same thing
with NA, however the problem is that PCTCP is no longer available.
I will admit that I don't have much knowledge about networking. I've been
hoping that my friend K8DD, who spent a career doing such things and who is
now retired and has nothing better to do :-) would point the way.
The note from Juha, OH6XX about their Ethernet networking experiences with
the Windows version of CT was very interesting. His comment "The DOS
version of CT is a pain in the a.. to configure for the ethernet use" would
likely apply to NA, or any DOS application trying to network via Internet.
For those you not familiar with the process, its a little more complicated
than just stuffing an Ethernet card in your computer. Besides the card,
you need something called a "packet driver", which is in essence the
low-level software interface between the network card and your DOS
application that wants to talk to it. If you don't have the packet driver,
you're screwed. Not all that long ago, packet drivers came on the floppy
disk with the network card. I hear that's not the case any more. How
about that nice Compaq computer you just bought from BestBuy with the
onboard network card? Forget it...
Since its all a Windoze world now, the network card comes with Windows
drivers and that's it. Plug and play and all that.
I would dearly love to make NA work with Ethernet. The K8CC shack has
*TEN* logging computers, and they are a pain to update before each contest,
not to mention the benefits of Ethernet networking vs. COM ports during the
contest. K1TTT was kind enough to send me the source code for his CT
NETTSR driver but K9TM and I have not had much luck getting it to compile,
much less modifying NA to talk to it.
73,
Dave/K8CC
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