Parnet Connections 


                                by Greg Tow



   Ed: The release of this commercial product will be at the end of April, via
  Megadisc - the price of the whole package is $19.95 + p&p $5.

   This package is both software and hardware, and the hardware is a plug
  which plugs into your parallel port to achieve networking between two 
  Amigas or a CDTV and an Amiga. the software included is the shareware
  release of ParNet and NetPKeys with built-in interface to allow you
  to create a bootdisk for your networking. As a result you shold have 
  hassle-free networking.  


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   It has been said that the Amiga has fallen far behind the "other" brands
  in respect to business applications, especially in the area of networking.
  Well, Commodore, as well as third party suppliers, have had networking
  products available for some time.  These products have been traditionally
  expensive for the Amiga mainly due to low demand (hence low volume) for
  manufacturing the hardware required for networking, such as ethernet,
  arcnet, etc. That may change in the near future.

   However, there have been some alternative forms of networking for the
  Amiga that have been around for a number of years. Public Domain material
  has been the source of many useful programs for the Amiga owner, and within
  this Domain lies one of the cheapest forms of networking available.

   Parnet is a copyright distribution package by "The Software Distillery",
  Doug Walker and Matthew Dillon. The programs in this distribution,
  combined with a specially configured parallel port cable allow a two-way
  network between Amiga computers. With the release of the CDTV, Parnet
  connections have regained popularity due to low cost and relatively decent
  transfer speed. If you consider that the CD-Rom drive in the CDTV has an
  access rate similar to a floppy drive, then Parnet provides a reasonable
  link that would be comparable to having the drive installed directly to the
  Amiga.

   Once connected, access to gigabytes of information is available. The CDTV
  unit is quite versatile and can read a number of different CD-Rom formats.
  For example, most of the IBM-PC CDs are in the standard ISO9660 format and
  can be read or copied directly. This is quite handy for finding some high
  quality GIF images or outline fonts for multimedia presentations, or
  desktop publishing articles.

   Of course, if a keyboard and mouse are connected to the CDTV, then access
  to the Amiga drives are possible. This allows remote execution of programs
  from the host Amiga. This can be interesting if another person wanted to
  play a game that was installed on the Amiga. The only problem here is that
  the CDTV is limited to 1Mb of chip memory (unless a third party 2Mb agnus
  modification has been installed), and the network link tends to consume
  about a reasonable amount of memory. A growing number of programs
  available these days require at least 1Mb of memory so this form of
  operation can be limited. Deluxe Paint will run over the net for example,
  but is slow to load and brush sizes and memory intensive effects are
  limited. Great for the kids though, up to the point when the system
  crashes and it has to be rebooted and the network link reinstalled.

   Third party products for the CDTV have so far been rather disappointing
  and apart from the peripherals that Commodore has released such as the
  keyboard, trackball unit and genlock, there are few cheap offerings. A
  SCSI interface and hard drive are available now but with a price tag in
  excess of $AUS 800, it is not too attractive especially considering that
  mounting the drive will consume more memory. A fast memory expansion
  device would be of great value if the CDTV was to be used remotely by
  another person. If the CDTV is used as another peripheral, then memory is
  not much of an issue.

   Parnet is available from many sources, the Fred Fish collection being the
  obvious one. The fish collection has grown to over 840 disks, but Parnet
  still only resides on disk 400 and has not really been updated over the
  years. For some, the instructions in the document files have led to
  confusion as those not familiar to the CLI encounter some difficulty coming
  to terms with the installation. Recently, an alternative distribution has
  become available in the form of ParBench. This is an archive available
  from a number of bulletin boards (BBSs) that contains iconified
  installation scripts written by Vernon Graner. Also included is an
  experimental 680x0 version of the "parnet.device" that can be copied to the
  "devs:" directory. ParBench3.1 also contains some other handy programs to
  make the connection more versatile.

   "NetPKeys" allows one keyboard and mouse to be used over two machines
  connected via Parnet. This is quite handy and foregoes the need to
  purchase a separate keyboard and mouse for a CDTV. The "DefSysDisk"
  program allows the system of the remote machine to be assigned to the host
  machine. This is useful if the person using the remote machine requires
  additional libraries and/or resources that would normally entail a fair
  degree of disk swapping if the machine were running from a single floppy
  drive. Unfortunately, there is no way to enable booting a remote machine
  from a host.

   Another recent offering that should be available shortly is PiKIT which
  includes an installation disk and a Parnet cable adaptor. The installation
  disk has an easy point and click interface that will create bootable disks
  for a CDTV or Amiga, and/or install to a hard drive. This product uses the
  standard Parnet distribution and provides a simple method of installation
  without needing to know which machine is a host and which machine is a
  client. The PiKIT adaptor is also provides a simple way to connect the two
  machines. This adaptor plugs into only one of the machines; it doesn't
  matter which one; and a cheap 25-way male-to-male cable with all lines
  passed through is then connected between the other machines parallel port
  and the PiKIT adaptor.

   A word of caution though. Ensure both machines have the power switched
  off before installing the cable and adaptor. This should be common
  practice no matter what is being installed on an Amiga. The most common
  problem incurred with a Parnet connection is the failure of the CIA chips.
  These chips act like fuses if cables are connected or disconnected to the
  parallel port while the machine is switched on.

   The Fred Fish Disk 400, Parbench3.1, and PiKIT are all available from
  MegaDisc.


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