On Sun, Mar 19, 2000 at 05:18:24PM -0600, Bob Nestor wrote:
> We are however permitted to connect them to our company 
> supplied Desktops which are PCs running Windows-95/98/NT.  So my 
> co-workers have asked if there's any software available for NetBSD that 
> would allow a laptop running NetBSD to connect to the Desktop via 
> parallel or serial port for the purpose of doing disk sharing and/or file 
> transfers. 

It's a little bit counter-intuitive, but it will be simple, if you treat
the NetBSD laptop as the 'server' for PPP. Then you can use this:
http://www.mindspring.com/~kewells/net/ for the Win95 machines, and
use dial-up networking and a null-modem cable.

For Win98, you may not need it. I remember someone saying 98 comes with
Null-modem support for DUN - but I've never tried it.

For NT of course you could go the other way too, having NT run a RAS
server and NetBSD 'calling' it.

In any case above, you now have IP running, so you can run Samba,
winproxy, ssh port forwarding etc... whatever makes your connectivity
do what you need.

Of course, if the company will let you run PPP/serial into your
desktop PC, and they don't consider that 'attached to the corporate
LAN', then you may as well install a second ethernet card in your
desktop and get some speed. (USB ethernet if they don't want you to
open the machines, or if you want to be able to hide the adapter when
not in use ;-)

-- 
David Maxwell, david@vex.net|david@maxwell.net -->
If you don't spend energy getting what you want,
	You'll have to spend it dealing with what you get.
					      - Unknown