Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Sat, 8 May 2004, James Miller wrote:

> On Fri, 7 May 2004, Sindi Keesan wrote:
> 
> > My partner said nobody is using coax any more.
> 
> I disagree.  I would say "few people use coax anymore."  Contrary to what
> Steven suggested, I find UTP cable to be alot more readily available (read
> free, throwaway) than coax.  I think coax networks were generally replaced
> in the US quite a few years ago, so the free cable era for coax has
> already sort of come to a close.  But with wireless networks replacing
> wired, general network upgrades and the American spirit of waste and
> overconsumption, there seems to be plenty of free UTP floating around.


On our way to the Kiwanis club rummage sale this morning we stopped at a 
yard sale and pickeup up a set of five bowls for $1 and he threw in a UTP 
cable for free and three modems for 21 cents (one is a winmodem, another 
says 56K on it and one is unmarked).  We offered to recycle the four 
computers and two boxes of other stuff if it does not sell.  

At Kiwanis club I got back three of the 20 or so ethernet cards I had 
donated.  THey also have lots of cables (shorter than our 50' one).  There 
are no cards with BNC connectors there, just the phone-jack type, half of 
them being ISA, which the linux HOWTO said to avoid because you need to 
specify the base address and IRQ in modules.conf.  I got a matched pair of 
Kingston and another with a winbond chip which is also on ours.

I presume I next plug them into the computer one at a time and read dmesg 
to find out what they are and then look up the correct module somewhere in 
the HOWTO.  

> 
> > Other than loading the correct NIC module, what else does one do to
> > transfer files via a network card?  For plip you had to type in five lines
> > carefully, the last one different at each end.  Is there a BL FAQ?
> 
> Steven's got a point-to-point over ethernet scheme already set up in BL.
> It's for just two machines, so if you have more, you'll need to do a bit
> more setup.  Like he mentioned, it's laid out in /root/netsetup.  I
> discussed BL networking alot onlist over the last couple of years, so if
> you search the archive, you'll find lots of help.  I started out from a
> really basic level of understanding, so the stuff should be fairly
> newbie-friendly.

Thanks, I got plip working from his setup.  

> 
> On Fri, 7 May 2004, Sindi Keesan wrote:
> 
> > It seems like anything would work so long as I have the correct cable,
> > and both ends should have the same connector.  Even the 10base2 would be
> > sufficient to run a connection to the next block (120 meters).
> > We have no way to get the cable under the street surface and the nasty
> > neighbor across the street cut our phone wire when we went between blocks
> > above ground in someone else's yard than hers.
> 
> I've read something about the effective limit of UTP being 300 feet.  But
> I've also read about people who have exceeded that limit by quite a bit
> (to 900 ft, if memory serves).  I think there are slight speed penalties
> with those longer runs.  You could also try wireless for that run.  I

Unless we run cable across the street somehow (which we cannot do because 
of a nasty neighbor) we are limited to the size of my property which is 78 
feet max.

> inherited an old PDA that has an infrared device for syncing that attaches
> to a serial port.  There should be alot of these infrared-to-serial
> thingies available, since the trend now is to sync PDA's via USB.  If you
> had 2 such, a clear line of sight between the two locations and good
> weather conditions, a wireless link of approximately 56k modem speed could
> be established.  I don't really know how feasible this is, having never
> tried it: I just have such things in mind since I've inherited this
> infrared device and have been wondering how to use it.

Sounds interesting.  We have a couple of 900 MHz cordless phones that work 
when the leaves are off the trees, as a connection between houses one 
block apart.  First the network connection.  (And before that I have to 
get a couple of 'not a kernel image' computers to behave maybe with 
bare.i instead of Steven's zimage).

> 
> James
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