"john graesser" wrote in message
...

wrote in message ...
Just out of curiosity, is there any reason you can't either buy what
you're
asking for off-the-shelf in the form of, e.g., LapLink or else use an
interface that's better suited to the problem to begin with (such as
Ethernet
or even those USB "networking" cables)?

An even better solution would be to cobble the destination drive
into the source-drive's PC, do a big XCOPY, and uncobble it.
Unfortunately, in my situation the drives are NOT compatible, either.

Neither do the computers I'm working with have Ethernet or USB.

And there's almost a times-100 ratio in speed; to copy a 1 gig
disk via laplink will take about 24 HOURS vs about 17 MINUTES via
the parallel port.

Besides, there's always the fun of doing it, and that much time
difference should even "pay" for the programming effort.

At least one version of laplink that I remember used the printer port for
connecting.

I got into this a little late, but I'm also assuming in this case that there
are no standard, common media (CD, DVD, etc.) either. Somewhere around here
I still have a file transfer program which came with a null modem cable, but
also gave instructions on how to build a parallel port cable. IIRC, the
data lines were 1-to-1, but some control lines were switched. Would this
data be helpful or do you already have this information?

-NM