Joystick and network advice

[Bloodwych]

Well I’ve got the Amiga-PC parallel link-up kit and a Competition Pro this morning.

The Pro is built like a tank but a little stiff for my liking. I’m sure that either a few games of BattleSquadron (Novabombs) or showing it a picture of Margaret Thatcher will transform that newbie Comp Pro stiffness into putty in my hands.

The parallel linkup kit has been my best Amiga purchase for a long time. For a mere £15, I’ve got a decent PC-Amiga network pushing speeds of around 22-40 KBYTE/sec depending on if reading or writing! Best of all however is that my PC is now the Amigas bitch , with the miggi being the master and the PC the dominated slave.

I’m very impressed with the software. A simple Pcdrive icon on my WB gives me direct access to all the PC drives for reading, writing or extra storage space. Brilliant!! The simplicity and power of the Amiga WB always amazes me.

One thing confuses me about the Amiga WB and I’m hoping one of you guys could explain. This issue has troubled me for ages, before I even started networking:

When large files are copied on the Amiga (be it HD to HD, Disk to HD, PC to Amiga etc.) within WB windows it always writes the entire file to RAM first then writes it back to disk. This causes problems with large files because if you run out of RAM the transfer fails.

Now, if you copy large files using some program like Afcopy, Dopus or Filer then the file is written to disk in small increments using a set amount of RAM (or cache). This means large files can be copied no probs.

Why is this the case? Is there a way of setting up a limited RAM cache when using Amiga WB windows for large file copying so it doesn’t run out of RAM and fail?

Also, which is the best: Afcopy, Filer or Dopus?

Thanks for the tips and advice!

[jmmijo]

So this Twin Express software supports a bi-directional Parallel cable connection between your Amiga and PC? I've thought about this myself and wonder if it's better then my current serial port connection via null-modem cable. It appears to be faster but if errors are going to occur then I too would rather wait

@Akira, I still have my Bug Joystick as well It's a black little palm size joystick with the auto-fire switch built-in

[Bloodwych]

Jmmijo, with the Parallel link up kit I received a special 4-way cable and a pre-modified, configured and setup version of PC2Ami308.

I can transfer files from the Amiga to the PC at 40 KBYTE/sec (loads faster than 14 KBYTE/sec on serial) and from the PC to the Amiga at 22 KBYTE/sec with no corruption. I believe the latter is slower because my Amiga is the master controlling the file transfers.

Since my Amiga is using an 020, 030 machines will see faster speeds!

Haven't found any corrupt files as of yet (3MB files are the largest I've tried so far) but like I said, this PC2Ami was altered and pre-configured unlike the Aminet do-it-yourself version. Seems like a top package considering the cable alone is worth £10 in the shops.

[jmmijo]

Do they ship to the states and where is the company I can purchase this cable from? Seems like it would be cheaper then getting a network card for my 4000

[Bloodwych]

I've linked the shop earlier in the thread. They run a few websites and I think they ship abroad.

amigastuff

You don't need this special pack however; it was just cost effective for me since I ordered a Comp Pro at the same time.

The lead they provide is a 4 way Laplink that you should be able to get hold of (common for Laptops) and the PC2Ami you can grab off aminet.

It works well. I've just uploaded 300+ MB of stuff off my Amiga HD onto my PC for CDRW backup and WinUAE. I've found no corruption problems, although the network needs resetting from time to time, which can be annoying.

My advise is if you want a solid connection for transferring large numbers of files on a weekly basis, go the network card route.

If you want a means to transfer a large number of files on very rare occasions or small numbers of files weekly, go parallel.

[jmmijo]

Thanks Bloodwych