[Coco] serial cable tricks for drivewire?

Robert Hermanek rhermanek at centurytel.net
Thu Mar 1 15:59:41 EST 2012


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



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