[Coco] serial cable tricks for drivewire?

[T. Franklin]

As someone else quietly suggested, this is a perfect application for RS422/RS485. There are many RS232 to RS422/RS485 converters available and it's rated up to 3000 feet. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Hermanek [mailto:rhermanek at centurytel.net]
Sent: Thursday, March 1, 2012 02:59 PM
To: 'CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts'
Subject: [Coco] serial cable tricks for drivewire?

I have a number of coco's connected to a single server via serial cables and drivewire. The drivewire server in this case is an application I wrote myself to be compatible with DW3 HDB-DOS, and since it allows multiple coco's to access the same DSK images simultaneously, it makes it easy to swap files between coco's, i.e. build program in Edtasm on one machine, swivel chair and execute it on another... Sounds great, but the downside to my setup is that the server is located far away from some of my coco's, and in one case I end up with a serial cable that is 50+ feet long. This connection is not reliable at 115k baud.I'm guessing 50+ feet (with no hardware flow control) is well beyond the official maximum length of a serial cable. Does anyone know of any tricks to allow longer serial cable connections to function? i.e., better connectors, different cable, things like that?-Robert Hermanek--Coco mailing listCoco at maltedmedia.comhttp://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco