• Neworking a DOS laptop with PLIP

    From kirkspragg@21:2/150 to All on Mon Sep 22 01:14:23 2025
    Hey folks & fellow retro PC enthusiasts!

    I managed to pickup a pretty mint compaq SLT/386 a couple of weeks ago with working monitor, keybaord, floppy and the original working hard drive (ok its a conner so :( but still... it works!)

    Being a laptop there no expansion slots to put things into & of course it does not have network card. But as well all know, one of the first things one must absolutely do with a new retro PC is to find some way to get it on the Internet!

    I managed to do this using the plip packet driver for dos & using the plip linux kernel module + some config to share Internet access via plip - if people are interested, I'll be happy to explain how I set it all up in more detail.

    Anyhow it did take a while get this working as in the end I had to recompile the kernal with a modified config that had disabled support for IEE 1284 transfer modes in the "Parallel Support section" of the kernel config.

    That made it all work. Without that, I just got lots of "plip0 timeout..." errors in the system logs on the linux server and no connectivity at the laptop end...

    Anyone else played with plip to network an old PC with linux? did you run into this issue? Is there some way to make this work via kernal module option tweaks or some such???

    Just asking as this seems like the sorta thing some of you would have tried, I wonder if any of you have run into the same issue?

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  • From mary4@21:2/150 to kirkspragg on Thu Oct 23 10:47:05 2025
    Hey folks & fellow retro PC enthusiasts!

    wassup! :D
    I managed to pickup a pretty mint compaq SLT/386 a couple of weeks ago with working monitor, keybaord, floppy and the original working hard
    drive (ok its a conner so :( but still... it works!)

    nice! i recently got my toshiba t1200 back from repair and got it online with a parallell port to ethernet adapter from xircom

    ki> Being a laptop
    there no expansion slots to put things into & of course ki> it does not have network card. But as well all know, one of the first ki> things one must absolutely do with a new retro PC is to find some way to ki> get it on the Internet! ki>
    your just like me! >:3

    I managed to do this using the plip packet driver for dos & using the
    plip linux kernel module + some config to share Internet access via plip
    - if people are interested, I'll be happy to explain how I set it all up in more detail.

    please tell me the details i am really curious how this works

    Anyhow it did take a while get this working as in the end I had to recompile the kernal with a modified config that had disabled support
    for IEE 1284 transfer modes in the "Parallel Support section" of the kernel config.

    That made it all work. Without that, I just got lots of "plip0
    timeout..." errors in the system logs on the linux server and no connectivity at the laptop end...

    interesting
    whats your contact?
    Anyone else played with plip to network an old PC with linux? did you
    run into this issue? Is there some way to make this work via kernal
    module option tweaks or some such???

    i never did because i been too busy zand i need help with this!:3
    Just asking as this seems like the sorta thing some of you would have tried, I wonder if any of you have run into the same issue? nope i need i help too with setting it up

    we also need a plip box to exist from parallell port to ethernet. we could really use one xD

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