[Coco] Drivewire cable lengths

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 19 July 2018 09:44:43 Nathan Byrd wrote:

> I haven't tried it yet (planning to play around with it soon) - but
> another idea could be to use a RS-232 to Bluetooth converter, as long
> as the PC supports the Serial Port Profile it might be another option
> without running a long wire? I know with config changes the Raspberry
> Pi supports Serial Port Profile for instance, depending on your PC
> might just work as well or work with a Bluetooth adapter.
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 7:13 AM Bill Pierce via Coco
> <coco at maltedmedia.com>
>
> wrote:
> > I don't know the maximum length, but I know Gene had his server in
> > his house and his Coco in his workshop in his back yard. I'm pretty
> > sure he said it was better than 50 feet. So, across the room should
> > be no problem.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Bill Pierce
> > "Charlie stole the handle, and the train it won't stop going, no way
> > to slow down!" - Ian Anderson - Jethro Tull
> >
> > My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
> > https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
> > Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPedia
> > http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
> >
> > E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: rietveld rietveld <rietveldh at hotmail.com>
> > To: Coco mailing list <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> > Sent: Wed, Jul 18, 2018 8:39 am
> > Subject: [Coco] Drivewire cable lengths
> >
> > Hi.
> >  What is the longest drivewire cable that someone is/was running.  
> > I want to use a single PC to connect to cocos. One is beside my PC 
> > but the other is across the room
> >

I have a 10 meter usb cable with a hub driver in each end, plugged into a 
ttyusb port on this linux box, and into a 7 port hub on the coco3's 
desk, with a 3 foot drivewire cable plugged into a serial to usb adapter 
about 3 feet long, plugged into that hub. When I have the coco3 running, 
and am working on code, I take a $110 brother B&W laser printer down and 
park it on the top shelf of the coco3's desk, plugged into that same 7 
port hub. cups finds it instantly. That printer is available for the 
coco3's use by way of the /p channel driver in drivewire, drivewire 
dumps that output to /p, in a separate directory here, inotifywait then 
tells a bash script I wrote to feed that file back to that printer thru 
cups. And it all just works. Takes about 10 seconds after getting the 
shell prompt back on the coco3, to start printing because of the drum 
warmup, but an assembly listing then almost flies out of the printer as 
its a 19 pages per minute printer.

Conclusion is that with a well built usb-2 cable, maximum cable length is 
whatever it takes to reach.

But the last time I turned on the coco3, it sat and waited for the 2 1G 
scsi drives to come online, which they did not. I suspect stiction but a 
whack on the cage they are in did not break them loose. I had other 
things to do so did not attempt to put them in my hand to start them. 
They have had a history of being stuck if turned off for a couple weeks 
for at least 5 years, but ran just fine once started. Those drives are  
from an old Amiga, so probably have in excess of 100,000 head flying 
hours on them.

Drives can last a long time. The Terabyte drive I use with amanda on this 
machine for backups, has in excess of 70,000 head flying hours on it 
now. And no sign of an upcoming failure yet, the 25 reallocated sectors 
it had the first time I had smartctl ask it at about 3000 hours, have 
not been added to in all that time.

> > I am using an old DB25 A/B switcher with DB9 to D25 adapters
> >
> >
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> >
> > --
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-- 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>