Page 1 PLIP Page 1 PLIP Parallel Line IP Copyright (c) 1995 by Martin Laubach Copyright (c) 1994 by Oliver Wagner and Michael Balzer All rights reserved This manual is intended to be read from front to back for more convenience. Page 2 PLIP Page 2 1. Introduction PLIP is a network device driver conforming to the SANA2 standard. It allows linking of two Amigas using their built-in parallel ports. PLIP is intended as a low-cost networking solution since the capabilities of the parallel hardware are somewhat limited. However, it gives much better results than SLIP and leaves the serial port free. Please read the entire manual before using PLIP. 1.1. Historic overview Oliver Wagner and Michael Balzer stopped development of the PLIP driver at version 38.11. However, this release had several drawbacks and lacked some needed capabilities, so I decided to take over where they left off. 2. Installation 2.1. Requirements You will need at least kickstart 2.04 (37.175) to use PLIP. Also some SANA2 compliant networking protocol stack (like Envoy, AS225R2 or AmiTCP) is necessary to actually use PLIP. 2.2. Cabling You need male (on an A1000 female) DB25 connectors and some (up to 4 meters) parallel cable. Connect D0-D7 to D0-D7 BUSY to BUSY POUT to POUT ACK to STROBE STROBE to ACK GND to GND You can look up the pin assignment in your Amiga User Manual, Appendix A. Please note that this cable differs from ParNet! Double check before using! There is a potential problem with the RI (ring indicator) line on the serial port. If you have problems running PLIP, first try to remove any device connected to the serial port. If that helps, you might try cutting the RI line in the serial connector. Installation Cabling Page 3 PLIP Page 3 2.3. Installing Copy plip.device to devs:networks. See the documentation of your networking package for further installation steps. Note that if you are going to use both Envoy and TCP/IP over PLIP at the same time, you might consider using different packet types for Envoy than the default 2048. While the default value works fine, it induces quite some overhead and you will find that different packet types for Envoy speed up things considerably. Since PLIP only allows two hosts to be linked together, addressing is limited to 1 Bit. One host uses plip.device unit 0, the other one plip.device unit 1. The device will not work correctly if both machines use the same unit number. 3. Miscellanea 3.1. Support If you have any suggestions, bug reports etc., feel free to contact the author at Martin Laubach Fido: 2:310/3.14 Email: mjl@auto.tuwien.ac.at 3.2. No Warranty THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. Miscellanea No Warranty Page 4 PLIP Page 4 3.3. Disclaimer No warranty, either express or implied, is made with respect to the fitness or merchantability of PLIP. Martin Laubach (referred to as "the author"), reserve the right to not develop any future versions of PLIP. The author will try to make a good faith attempt at correcting any problems if any are discovered, but are in no way required, nor bound to correct them. The author neither assumes nor accepts any responsibility for the use or misuse of this program. They also will not be held liable for damages or any compensation beyond the original registration fee due to loss of profit or any other damages arising out of the use, or inability to use this program. Martin Laubach will not be liable for any damage arising from the failure of this program to perform as described, or any destruction of other programs or data residing on a system attempting to run the program. While we know of no damaging errors, the user of this program uses it at his or her own risk. Miscellanea Disclaimer Page 5 PLIP Page 5 4. Acknowledgements The following names are either trademarks or the efforts of the person and/or company listed: Amiga and AmigaDOS are trademarks of Commodore-Amiga, Inc. PLIP originally by Oliver Wagner and Michael Balzer. Envoy 2.0 by Intangible Assest Manufacturing, thanks to Dale Larson and Heinz Wrobel. 5. Changes The following lists the major difference to PLIP 38.11 Plip 37.15 - Standard version string - Major code cleanup - Line arbitration now symmetrical regardless of master/slave - Extended checksum calculation to packet envelope - Implemented GETSPECIALSTATS - READORPHAN returns complete wire packet, corrected Plip 37.17 - Fixed broken DEVICEQUERY - Implemented SANA2IOFRAW on read - Reduced static memory consumption - Do not fail when CopyBuf routines are missing on open - Implemented Packet Filter - Fixed broken IOQUICK bit handling Plip 37.18 - Reworked AbortIO. Correctly locks lists and removes io regardless of whether it's in one of my lists. Caveat emptor - Eliminated race condition. Initializing lists was done in server process but could be used before that - Removed antique unused code - struct BufRoutines now contains node for linking and list for requests. Allows multiple protocol stacks on same packet type. - Removed configuration file parsing. Changes Page 6 PLIP Page 6 6. Road Map 1. Introduction .................................... 2 1.1. Historic overview ............................. 2 2. Installation .................................... 2 2.1. Requirements ................................. 2 2.2. Cabling ...................................... 2 2.3. Installing ................................... 2 3. Miscellanea ..................................... 3 3.1. Support ...................................... 3 3.2. No Warranty ................................... 3 3.3. Disclaimer ................................... 4 4. Acknowledgements ................................ 5 5. Changes ......................................... 5 6. Road Map ......................................... 6 "This is the end. Please pull the plug." Road Map