Ideas Needed!

Falkorre

ok, heres the challenge.........

I need a way of getting 5.5 gigs of info from a desktop machine to a laptop.
burning to cd not an option as dont have one.

Any ideas??

B

silverside

use network? beg borrow or steal a hub, a pci network card, and a cardbus network card if you neeed them, use MS network wizard, bobs your uncle.
else use a firewire/usb hard disk or dvd burner.
whats the problem?

Standard Toaster

Does the laptop have a floppy drive?


Network the machines like silverside suggested....even a direct cable connection.

Señor Juárez

PCMCIA network card, PCI network card, and crossover cable. sorted, unless you have ancient operating systems on the two systems.

who knows, its quite possible that they already have network cards in them.

aidan_walsh

po0k

Originally posted by The_Edge
Does the laptop have a floppy drive?


Network the machines like silverside suggested....even a direct cable connection.

Direct-cable isn't an option for 5megs, let alone 5.5Gigs.
100Mbit FullDuplex with a cross-over (as Marclar pointed out) is the only option, short of getting an adapter for the laptop drive to hook it into the 4-pin molex and 40-pin IDC connector in the desktop machine.

A ethernet hub isn't an option either.
They're simply shit, and 100mbit switches are cheap and plentiful at the moment.

silverside

out of interest why wouldnt a hub work? there is more likely to be a hub lying around than a croosover cable.

Señor Juárez

i think he just means "dont get a hub. they are useless. switches are a far better investment".

no?

silverside

hubs, switches, all the same to me. I don't know that much about networking to me they are just ways of hooking a few ethernet cables together!

Webmonkey

Theres a huge difference between hubs and switches...

Hubs devide the Max bandwidth between all the machines...eg. 100mbit hub will only give 10mbit between each machine if there are 10 machines.

Switchs on the other hand give maximum bandwidth for all machines so all machines get 100mbit each without the amount of users effecting it....(Well some small switches do give trouble)

Gerry

You can make a normal patch cable into a crossover if needs be, its not something you'd use long term, but works fine on a short cable.
Basically:

cut into the insulation at some point along the cable. Cut the orange, orange/white, green and green/white wires.
Strip a bit off them. Now connect :

orange to orange/white
orange/white to orange
green to green/white
green/white to green

Cover each connection up with some insulating tape, hey presto, a working crossover. Yeah, I know this is bad because the pairs get untwisted, but over a run of a few feet, it doesn't seem to make any odds, I've used this in emergencies and the connection is fully reliable, 100mbits full duplex.

jozi

Gerry: Yeah, I know this is bad because the pairs get untwisted

what do you mean by that, whats so bad about untwisting them wires?

just wondering

jozi

Specky

the signals are differentially driven (ie one goes positive whilst the other goes negative and vice versa). When the cables are so close together any noise that is picked up from the outside world is likely to effect both halves of a differential signal equally so if at the receiver you just amplify the difference between the two signals any noise is "ignored".

If pairs are untwisted significantly then there is a possibility that noise picked up will no longer be "common mode" ie it may not effect both halves of the differential signal equally so when the difference is amplified there will be noise in the data which (if bad enough) may corrupt the data.

There will also be a change in characteristic impedence of the cable where it becomes untwisted.

Very important for overall network integrity and bandwidth maximisation over a network but probably wouldn't make a blind bit of difference if you're just trying to patch two machines together for the purposes of this exercise.

Probably more problems caused by badly punched down cables on patch panels than by a wee little untwisting like this.

Similarly the differences/relative advantages/disadvantages of switches and hubs don't matter a hoot if you're just connecting two machines together as is suggested here.

jabberwock

Gerry I think your a small bit out there with the colors.

afair

(orange) to (green)
(orange/white) to (green/white)
(green) to (orange)
(green/white) to (orange/white)

the idea being that you connect the transmitter of 1 pc to the receiver of the other and vice-versa.

ignore me if i'm wrong

jozi

thanks for the explanation specky

i was a bit curious because mice decided to eat trough my network cable so i stripped the cable and reconnected the wires back up with one of them blocks for connection 2 wires. not sure if the same goes for my cable, non cross-over, but it's been like this for a good while now and i haven't noticed anything but who knows- some day!

Specky

Precisely. 100 Megabit may sound fast but it's not really in the grand scheme of things. You may be seeing the odd broken packet but error detection/correction and re-tries all happen automatically so you probably wouldn't even notice if you were getting corruption.

As it is you probably aren't.

I wonder if PVC cable insulation is the mouse equivalent of junk food....

Cal

Originally posted by jabberwock
Gerry I think your a small bit out there with the colors.

afair

(orange) to (green)
(orange/white) to (green/white)
(green) to (orange)
(green/white) to (orange/white)

the idea being that you connect the transmitter of 1 pc to the receiver of the other and vice-versa.

ignore me if i'm wrong

This pinout is Correct.

Cal

jozi

not sure if it junk food to them but they fond of cheese and peanut butter to and have mastered the art of eating of a mouse trap without setting it of, little bastards :mad:

Gerry

Originally posted by jabberwock
Gerry I think your a small bit out there with the colors.

afair

(orange) to (green)
(orange/white) to (green/white)
(green) to (orange)
(green/white) to (orange/white)

the idea being that you connect the transmitter of 1 pc to the receiver of the other and vice-versa.

ignore me if i'm wrong

Yup, thanks for the correction. I was working from the top off my head, which was rather sore at the time Should have just dragged out one of my jury rigged crossovers. Had a look, and thats the pinout ok.

M@lice

Apparently you can network 2 machines quick and easy if they both have a fire wire port. Can also be done with usb but you'll need a special cable.

Not sure of the exact details but it may be an option. Firewire can get data transfer rates up to 400mbits/s ie 4X 100 base t. Usb2.0 480mbits/s

Hopefully some1 here knows more about this than i do.

Krusty_Clown

ressem

If networking is out of the question (Don't rule it out for the sake of a few quid, it's the best option)

3.5 to 2.5 inch IDE converter.
Lets you plug your laptop drive into your Desktop.
Probably has to come from abroad.

Or a usb/firewire enclosure that'll connect to your laptop.
I've got one for hotswapping CD/RW drives, desktop hard drives or whatnot to the laptop.

For cheap, slow and irregular transfers

If in a city you should be able to find
F/F Rs232 serial cable, or maybe one of those belkin USB devices or Laplink product (assuming windows)

daveyjoe

I know you guys have all settled on the networking idea but...
If you have a hard disk MP3 player, you could do it that way, or (reaches for calculator) 3820 floppys :LOL: .

po0k

You really should just network them.
You#'re going to have to get used to it eventually, so why not now?

jozi

SyxPak

is the helmet just incase things go wrong for them:D

acous

Originally posted by Webmonkey
Hubs devide the Max bandwidth between all the machines...eg. 100mbit hub will only give 10mbit between each machine if there are 10 machines.

Not every machine on the hub will be saturating the network at all times, so the difference isn't quite that big. I'm not saying i disagree though, get a switch.

Dr Bolouswki

crossover cable - leave it run overnight to copy the data... least spent, job done...

unless of course neither machine has network cards....

kaimera

Originally posted by Killah_B
crossover cable - leave it run overnight to copy the data... least spent, job done...

5.5gigs wouldn't take all night.

[edit]
Webmonkey is bang on. should only take half an hour or so

Webmonkey

Originally posted by Kaimera
5.5gigs wouldn't take all night. 2+ hours or so.
I've done 2 gigs in about an hour

I've transfered a 2 - 3 gig halflife folder several times in 10 -15 minutes with 100mbit full duplex

Falkorre

Thnx for all the suggestions
looks like i may have found a cleaner way than playing with cables and possibly causing a blackout over south west dublin lol

2 x bluetooth usb dongles! one in the pc, the other in the laptop. cheap clean, easy.
have alllready managed to send some small files this way

B

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by Falkorre
Thnx for all the suggestions
looks like i may have found a cleaner way than playing with cables and possibly causing a blackout over south west dublin lol

2 x bluetooth usb dongles! one in the pc, the other in the laptop. cheap clean, easy.
have alllready managed to send some small files this way

B

I'd say was expensive. How much did they cost?

acous

hmm not to mention bluetooth speed is less than 1mbit. for 1.5 gigs make that at least... 33 hours?

daveyjoe

The highest speed you can get is just 30-35Kb/s (and thats when it's maxed out) although the theoretical max is 723.2kbps, it is extremely hard to get even half of that.

Expect it to take over two days to transfer that amount of data.

spaczed

Well if you do feel like taking the hard drive out of your PC temporarily, the laptop hard drive to desktop adaptor is only €13 here in peats. It would definitely be a speedy solution if you do have a space on an IDE channel on the desktop.

It's cheap, and it entails opening your computer :cool:

Gerry

Good to see that you took the advice anyway. Get over your fear of opening your computer up. Open it up, close it back up again, switch it on. Theres a 95% chance it will still work. I hope you got the bluetooth usb gear was free, thats about the only justification for using it in this situation.