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plip.lha
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Plip
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1993-06-10
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PLIP.DEVICE(1) PLIP.DEVICE(1)
NAME
PLIP - A Parallel Line IP SANA2 Device Driver
OVERVIEW
PLIP is a network device driver conforming to the SANA2
standard. It allows linking of two Amigas using their
parallel ports. Transfer speed is around 40 kbyte/sec.
The complete low level transfer protocol is integrated in
the device driver, including port arbitration handshaking
and interrupt driven reads. Although the transfer process
itself is cpu intensive, the device needs no cpu resources
when no transfer is in progress.
PLIP is intended as a low-cost networking solution, since
the capabilities of the parallel hardware are somewhat
limited. However, it gives much better results than SLIP
and leaves the serial port free.
REQUIREMENTS
You will need at least kickstart and workbench V2.04
(37.175) to use PLIP. Also some SANA2 compliant network-
ing protocol (like Envoy or AS225R2) will come in handy
:-).
INSTALLATION
Just copy plip.device to devs:networks. See the documen-
tation of your networking package for further installation
steps. If you are going to use both Envoy and AS225 over
PLIP at the same time, be sure to first start Envoy, then
AS225. If you've got problems with multiple protocol
stacks you might try making the packet and host IDs for
each protocol unique.
Since PLIP only allows two hosts to be linked together,
addressing is limited to 1 Bit. One host uses
plip.device, Unit 0, the other one plip.device, Unit 1.
The device will not work if both machines use the same
unit number.
PLIP looks for an environment variable called
ENV:SANA2/PLIP.config. This should contain one line termi-
nated with a newline, which will be parsed by ReadArgs
according to the template
TIMEOUT/K/N,PRIORITY=PRI/K/N,MTU/K/N,BPS/K/N, where
TIMEOUT=num
Packet receive timeout, default is 330000. Set to
a higher value if you have problems with slow
machines.
PRIORITY=num
PLIP task priority, default is 15. Do not change
this.
Version 38.7 Release 3 1
PLIP.DEVICE(1) PLIP.DEVICE(1)
MTU=num Maximum packet data size, default and maximum is
8192. If you change this, be sure to change it on
both machines to the same value!
BPS=num The nominal bits per second rate returned from a
device query. Default is 25000 which is much too
low but works with beta Envoy.
An example PLIP.config is included. All recognized parame-
ters will be printed into the startup window of PLIP.
CABLE
You will need male (A1000: female) DB25 connectors and
some (up to 4 meters) parallel cable. Connect:
D0-D7/BUSY/POUT to D0-D7/BUSY/POUT
ACK to STROBE
STROBE to ACK
GND to GND
You can look up the pin assignment in your Amiga User Man-
ual, appendix A. Please note that this cable differs from
ParNet! Double check before using!
There is a potential problem with the RI (ring indicator)
line on the serial port. If you have problems running
PLIP, first try to remove any device connected to the
serial port. If that helps, you might try cutting the RI
line in the serial connector.
COPYRIGHT
PLIP is (C) Copyright 1993 Oliver Wagner & Michael Balzer,
All Rights Reserved. You are granted a limited copying
license to distribute this version of plip for private
purposes only.
Under no circumstances may PLIP be used on any machine
which is used for the research, development, construction,
testing or production of weapons or other military appli-
cations. This also includes any machine which is used for
training persons for any of the above mentioned purposes.
PLIP is SHAREWARE. You may test PLIP for two weeks. If you
decide to use PLIP (regularly or irregularly) you have to
pay the
---> SHAREWARE FEE of 10,- DM (or 10 US$) <---.
Please send the money to
Oliver Wagner
Landsberge 5
W-4322 (from July 1993 on: 45549) Sprockhoevel
GERMANY
Version 38.7 Release 3 2
PLIP.DEVICE(1) PLIP.DEVICE(1)
Use PLIP at your own risk. Please send bug reports to:
o.wagner@aworld-2.aworld.de / O.WAGNER@AWORLD-2.ZER
or
bilbo@bagsend.aworld.de / M.BALZER@AWORLD.ZER
Please exactly state the machine configuration which
causes PLIP to fail.
HISTORY
V37.11
- small speedups in transmission handshaking
- now uses utility library for parsing the buffer
management taglist
V37.14
- optimized BPS and MTU
- cleaned up the code
V38.5
- fixed CRC check
- added information window
- some protocol fixes
V38.7
- changed hardware type to 13 (official PLIP ID)
- added configuration mechanism
Version 38.7 Release 3 3