Hi! Looking at
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/user/lptlink/ I have noticed that 1. the URL mentioned in the source no longer works and 2. https://sourceforge.net/projects/lptransfer/ which is the current location of the source contains some ITALIAN documentation for the tool, so it could be nice if somebody could translate it and add it to the copy of LPTransfer which we have on ibiblio :-) Also, I find it confusing that the tool got renamed by probably Allan Campbell who has apparently made a fresh binary for DOS while working on Windows. This is possibly to shorten the tool's name to max 8 chars. The tool itself is a simple command line utility which can be either the sending or the receiving end of a CRC protected, low-level I/O (probably for speed) printer port data transfer connection. The transmission uses 4 consecutive bits of the status register and a fifth status flag as clock, which I guess is a common style for printer port transfer cables, but it STILL would be nice to have documentation which wiring one is exactly supposed to use :-p Also, some of the source code comments are still Italian (translation would be nice) and the C code tells me that the original version was for Linux (ioperm, run as root). As the source code mentions the year 2003, I think this is or is based on version 0.0.3 of the tool. If we have a much better ALTERNATIVE tool somewhere and LPTransfer is too minimalistic to care about anyway, it might be better to just skip updating it, obviously ;-) Our current binary is about 20 kB (UPXed from 30 kB) so I am pretty sure it would be feasible to make it a LOT smaller with a more lightweight compiler (current is OpenWatcom, probably 2002) or by using fewer library functions or our lightweight "printf" replacement, as the source code only is a few hundred lines effectively, split into 2 separate files in an uncanny "C as H" way. Thanks for reading my awkward ponderings about this poor DOS user's laplink replacement :-) Note that while LPTransfer is in our area of ibiblio, it is not part of the FreeDOS 1.2/1.3 distro yet, so it only has ETHERDFS for raw-networked-mount as means of file transfer, as well as various network clients. Probably far more convenient, but it needs a network. I remember it is also possible to transfer files with File Maven 3.5 via printer port cable, but that one is freeware. See http://www.briggsoft.com/fmdos.htm :-) The site also has a shareware Link Maven, DOS/Windows. Regards, Eric PS: Do people like AEFDISK? A command line partitioner I just noticed to sit around in our utilities list: https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/pkg-html/group-util.html Might be useful for the installer. PPS: We still have DZEMM there, but it seems Windows-only? _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
