[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I should imagine the best bet would be to have an ETH_USE command to point to > the deivce to talk to (IP address for ethernet) and this would then operate > as a directory device.To open a printer you would use something akin to > > ETH_CONNECT "1.0.0.127" (point to printer device) > ETH_USE "par"
You're mixing different things. First of all, Ethernet is just what it says: Ethernet (OSI Layer 1 and 2). An Ethernet driver does not need to know a thing about TCP. On top of the Ethernet driver usually runs a TCP/IP stack (OSI 3 and 4). Hopefully one can just use one of the stacks in development on top of the Ethernet driver. If you have all this you can already use applications on top of that (OSI 5 and up), i.e. e-mail, ftp, browser etc. To access the data e.g. on a Windows machine you need the SMB protocol. Considering how the Linux community is struggling to have decent SMB support I don't see this happening for the QL. To access Linux boxes usually NFS is used. I have heard that the protocol is a pain in the behind, too. There are different protocols to access printers/print servers on the net, most notably again the SMB protocol. Others are LPD, IPP or if you're lucky an easier Peer-To-Peer protocol. Only the latter might be supported without too much of a hassle. On top of of that printers either speak Postscript or their own language. So you have the same problem there that you have with local printers. So, after all this, what can realistically be done with an Ethernet port? With a TCP/IP stack one can connect to a Cable/DSL router (NOT directly to a modem, I don't see PPPoE and the like happening for the QL, either) and use the applications available to do e-mail for example. Also two or more SMSQ/E machines can be connected and somehow talk to each other. Either using self-made applications, even in SBasic, or using something like an adapted SERNet. This shouldn't be too hard to do once the transport layers work. What I don't really see to happen (but everybody is invited to prove me wrong): access to Windows/Linux file shares or printers. Marcel
