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I have this really old (P1 32MB Win95) Toshiba laptop. I use it to type stuff (and play Minesweeper
) without having to wait for the main family computer to free up.
Problem is, I have no way of transfering my documents that I type on the laptop to be printed. My main computer doesn't have a floppy drive, I've lost the laptop's floppy drive, the laptop only reads CDs and cannot write them, and is doesn't have a USB port, which my printer needs to connect to it.
So what do I do? Well, the first thing that came to mind was simple file transfer networking with a serial or parallel port. But I don't know how to do this, having no experience whatsoever in local networks. Any ideas? I don't even know what a serial port looks like in comparison to a parallel port.
f only life let you press CTRL-Z.
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Freebasic is like QB, except it doesn't suck.
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You can use a null modem. It's just a cable that goes from your laptop's serial port to your PC's. It's easy to configure and to share folders thru' it. The cons: it's extremely slow.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q142065/
The best way is to get a PCMCIA network interface card and building a proper network. With it, you could also connect to the internet with the laptop.
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Thanks, although I don't have the money for either the cable or the PCMCIA card.
Anyway, it doesn't matter - the CD drive in the laptop is broken so I can't load software that would fix a differen't problem, I just discovered that. Frustrating...Thanks though.
f only life let you press CTRL-Z.
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Freebasic is like QB, except it doesn't suck.
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What devices does the laptop have? I.E. Modem, parrallel port, serial port?
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Zack, If you're handy, or have a friend who is, you might consider opening up your laptop, removing the hard disk, and connecting it to you main computer to transfer all those documents you need.
I'm not handy, so I don't know how to do this. But, I've seen my son do this quite successfully.
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Most laptop hard drives will need an adapter to connect to a standard desktop IDE cable. I've seen and used one before at work, but I don't know where they got it. I also learned the hard way that the adapter fit two ways, only one of which was correct, rendering a hard disk unusable in the process...
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Andrew: I'm not really sure - again, I have no experience with those ports.
Moneo&Drv: that's an idea - and the hard disk is accessible from a simple flap in the bottom of the computer. But I can't buy any adapters...
Never mind, anyway. I discovered worse problems (various causes of random crashes) rendering it unreliable and for the trash.
Thanks, though.
f only life let you press CTRL-Z.
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Freebasic is like QB, except it doesn't suck.
Posts: 3,616
Threads: 287
Joined: Jan 2003
Andrew: I'm not really sure - again, I have no experience with those ports.
Moneo&Drv: that's an idea - and the hard disk is accessible from a simple flap in the bottom of the computer. But I can't buy any adapters...
Never mind, anyway. I discovered worse problems (various causes of random crashes) rendering it unreliable and for the trash.
Thanks, though.
f only life let you press CTRL-Z.
--------------------------------------
Freebasic is like QB, except it doesn't suck.
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Zack, can you send an email from your laptop?
If so, you could email those documents as attachments to yourself and read/save them in the main computer.
Another idea is to borrow a parallel printer from a friend and print out your documents from your laptop onto this printer. If the printer is pretty common, you might be lucky and have the driver already installed or available in your version of Windows. You may need to load the driver from a CD which you'll need to find. If you need to load the driver from a floppy, you're out to lunch.
I would also check with friends and schoolmates for some solution where they could help you.
The "last resort" solution for retrieving those documents that you typed on the laptop is to place your laptop next to the main computer, bring up each document, and manually transcribe it to a document onto main computer. This will afford you the opportunity to perform final editing on these documents --- ha, ha. Hey, it could be worse. You might have lost these documents entirely.
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I didn't see if you said you don't have a network cable possibility, but why not a crossover cable between the two to create a network?
