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Laptop to Desktop Connection, is it possible?

P

Prince of Persia

Senior member
I need to hook up a Toshiba Tecra 8200 Laptop to a Dell Optiplex GX1 desktop. Is it possible to create some sort of direct connection via a USB, Serial, or Parrallel Cable?

The laptop uses Win2k, and the desktop uses WinNT.

Please help me out, I have to transfer the files from one to another.
 
1. The cheap way. Use the direct serial connection in Windows to connect the two by serial port. Works but very very slow.

2. Intermediate. Go buy something like akiraxtc suggests, which is basically a networking product to connect by USB or some other way.

3. The right way, just network the two computers. Put a nic in each and voila.
 
The laptop uses Win2k, and the desktop uses WinNT.

Read the latter part of that sentence; he's using Windows NT, so a USB connection is out of the picture right now. However, if he wants to upgrade his desktop to Windows 2000, then USB would be a possibility.
 
I can't upgrade this aren't MY computers. These are the computers at my work place and I was put in charge of finding a way to transfer files between them.

I can't nic them, cuz they're already on the network but my boss doesn't want to transfer files via network due to the sensitivity of the files.

So why is USB out of the connection?

If i use a serial port how would I go about making each computer recognize one another?
 
USB is out of the question because Windows NT doesn't support USB. Windows 2000 does. Anyway, if you have access to a parallel port Zip drive, you could use that.
 
Wait...you could get a crossover cable and connect the two computers DIRECTLY by their nics. That way the data is seen only to the two computers, instead of being broadcasted over the whole network by the hubs (that I assume is why he's concerned about security).
 
The usage of a zip drive is what we're trying to avoid, because theirs about 15 laptops and it would be burdensome to keep moving over the zip drive from one machinery to the next.

Could I just use a simple parrallel port connector to each other?

And what's this you say about a crossover cable, how would I go about doing this?
 
I got my crossover cable from a local computer store, who made it at a custom length for a very reasonable price. Basically, all you do is make sure each computer has a different IP address, connect the two at their network cards with the crossover cable, and hopefully it will work. If it doesn't ask the networking gurus on the forums, and they should be able to help (I'm networking-impaired, so don't ask me and complicated networking questions).
 
Can anyone verify/elaborate about this crossover cable?

Its not that I don't trust you, but I just need to make sure its feasible before going out and purchasing extra accessories for the company.

In addition, once I plug them into each other how would I go about getting the PC's to recognize one another.
 
If you use a crossover cable or a hub with the two computers hooked up to the hub then the easiest way to tranfer files would probably be to set up windows networking on the two computers. If you use netbeui then you probably would not need any other changes.

I think there is also a solution called LapLink. Not sure if the product is still available, but basically it is a special parallel cable and software that allows you to transfer files.

Also, why are you concerned about files traveling over the company lan? Afraid of employees snooping the data? In any decent corporate lan you probably have switches, so it is harder for employees to snoop. You might also consider options such as tunneling an FTP connection through SSH or using some VPN software that will keep your connection secure.
 
Why is the zip drive so burdensome? With a cabling solution, the laptops all have to be brought to the Optiplex, right? So instead, place a zip next to the Optiplex, plug in the Zip to the laptop, wait a few seconds for detection, copy to Zip. If necessary, replug the zip into the optiplex, or better yet, splurge and buy 2 zip drives -- a USB drive the laptops can share and a parallel port or internal drive exclusively for the Optiplex.

This may not be the best solution, but plugging and unplugging a USB zip drive into different laptops hardly seems burdensome to me. And, if you wanted to, you could take a zip drive to the laptops, rather than always having to bring the laptops over to the Optiplex.
 

Windows has "laplink" built into the OS. It's called "direct cable connection", so you don't need any special software. You just need the cable. It's a male-25-pin to male-25-pin cable that has different wiring in the middle, basically a crossover cable for parallel ports. There is also a serial version, but parallel transfers data faster. Just attach the "laplink" cable to both systems, run "direct cable connection" on both systems, and you can start transferring files in between the systems. The cable itself can be bought for maybe $10 or so. Just keep one end plugged into the desktop and add/remove the other end from each laptop that you want to transfer info from.
 
Depending on your options, you may want to consider encryption tools, rather than hardware. Consider this:

You have very sensitive data on a server on your network.
You don't trust your own network enough to put the data on the wire.
You are willing to put that super-sensitive data onto multiple laptops, that physically go outside the building, and are very easy to steal.
Once I steal the laptop, I have access to your super-sensitive data.

You may want to reconsider how you handle this information. I would suggest something like:

PGP Disk to store the data on an encrypted disk on the server.
Add all the laptop users to a key-ring, and give them all access to the PGP disk on the server.
Periodically, copy the entire PGP disk from the server to all the lappy's, across the existing network.

That way:
Data on server: Encrypted. (even admins can't read it)
Data on the network: Encrypted, high-speed connection.
Data on laptops: Stored encrypted, on high-risk devices.

--Woodie
 
Thanks for all your help guys.

1) The reason the zip drive would be burdensome is because there is like 10 laptops and 10 PC's, and about 3 zip drives.

2) I'll talk to my boss about encrypting their data, but I don't think they'll want to try something like that. I'll run it by them though.

3) Thanks a million guys, I'll probably try the direct connection thing for the time being.
 
Buy yourself a prallel to parallel cable, go to http://www.ghisler.com/ and download the latest version of Windows Commander. Install on both machines, connect both machines with the parallel port cable and go to 'Commands', 'Port Connection to Other PC...', set one machine as server and one as client and Bob's your Uncle.

It's not as quick as a network, but it's quicker than serial to serial and dead easy.

Hope this helps.

Bye the way, Win Commander is only about a 1Mb download
 
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