On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 08:15:10AM -0800, Andy R wrote:
> --- Richard Rauch <rkr@olib.org> wrote:
> > Re.
> >
> http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/netbsd-help/2004/01/08/0001.html
> > 
> > I'm not sure what you are asking.  BillOS does PPP
> > and BillOS does
> > SLIP.  
> 
> Ahh, pardon me. Brain fade. I've been on ethernet for
> so long that I forgot about serial line antics. I only
> ever set up a modem like once under *nix and I think I
> did SLIP and PLIP once or twice to amuse myself. I
> think Windows might even do PLIP with some coaxing.
> Which might be better than SLIP on a guest OS? I have
> a PLIP cable sitting here from the old PC anywhere
> days... I think that's what they used? 

Windoze 95 spoke a proprietary data transfer protocol over parallel 
cable, but nobody has ever figured it out, mostly because it was
never very interesting. It was simply for file transfers, not a 
network PHY of any kind. The only thing it had in common with PLIP
was the cable wiring.

It's not particularly easy to fault Microsoft for this, as PLIP is
completely non-standard. In it's incipience, PLIP was an MS-DOS 
packet-driver released into the public domain by Crynwyr software.
The (386 assembler) source was the protocol documentation. Linux
copied that protocol for it's PLIP implementation, although I think
it has a performace-hack that enables faster communication between
two Linux hosts. FreeBSD's lp(4) supports both the Crynwyr mode and
it's own "PLIP" protocol.

-- 
Bruce J.A. Nourish <bjan+public@bjan.net> http://bjan.freeshell.org