From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Jan 24 00:37:24 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id AAA15462 for questions-outgoing; Fri, 24 Jan 1997 00:37:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from gatekeeper.barcode.co.il (gatekeeper.barcode.co.il [192.116.93.17]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id AAA15452 for ; Fri, 24 Jan 1997 00:37:20 -0800 (PST) Received: (from nadav@localhost) by gatekeeper.barcode.co.il (8.7.5/8.6.12) id KAA28432; Fri, 24 Jan 1997 10:35:34 +0200 (IST) Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 10:35:34 +0200 (IST) From: Nadav Eiron To: Tim Moony cc: Dan Busarow , questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Connecting two PCs that are far away In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, 23 Jan 1997, Tim Moony wrote: > > > On Thu, 23 Jan 1997, Dan Busarow wrote: > > > > > Modems do not work if you just connect them together with phone cord. > > There is some pretty expensive equipment you can get to simulate > > the phone company but phone lines would be a lot easier. > > > > Short haul modems run about 100-150 each, you need one at each end. > > > [snip] > > Wow, that's expensive. My two PCs are about 100 feet apart but I want > to nail down the cable on the walls so altogether we're talking about 200 > feet. > > I just don't know if the cable would pick up too much noise along the way? > What do you suggest? > > > > I'd go with Ethernet. 10baseT works up to 100m (~330 ft.) and coax ThinWire runs up to 185m, so that should be enough. For serial communication, you may want to simply use RS422 instead of RS232. Look into catalogs for industrial PCs and the like. They are sure to carry serial cards that support that. RS422 supports distances of up to 2km (1.25 miles) at speeds of up to 1Mbps. I think an RS422 card with a 16550 UART on it should look just like a standard serial port to FreeBSD (does any one have any experience with it?). It will probably miss most of the modem control lines, so will have to resort to software flow control or something. Nadav