Making Your PCs Talk to Each Other

When I was a kid, a family was lucky if it had one TV. Having two TVs in a single household was out of the question. Things have changed. I know some families that have more TVs than people.

Not many families have reached that stage with computers: The majority of American homes still don’t even have one PC. But a growing number of families now have two or more PCs to avoid gridlock as the adults and kids compete to do their homework, finish work from the office and surf the Web. Add to this all the folks who bring home a laptop, and you have lots of multiple-PC families.

Having more than one PC in a home or office raises an interesting challenge. How are you going to get your data from one machine to another? Floppy disks work only for files that are 1.4 megabytes or smaller. If you’re transporting larger files, you’ll need to find a way to connect the two machines via a cable or a local area network.

If you have a Macintosh, it’s easy. The printer port on all Macs can also be used to create a slow but easy-to-configure network using software that comes with the operating system.

On a Windows PCs, the easiest way to move files between two machines is to use a product such as Laplink from Traveling Software. Unlike a Windows local area network, Laplink is very easy to install and doesn’t require any expensive hardware.

You connect the machines by plugging in a serial or parallel cable into both machines. The version that works with both Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 comes with a parallel cable. The version designed for Windows NT comes with a serial cable. The software can transfer files between machines with any version of Windows. Using a parallel cable is several times faster than using a serial cable.

The program has lots of options, including checking the time and date of the files on both computers to make sure that a file is copied only if it’s been updated. It also has built-in compression, which speeds things along.

Other Laplink features include the ability to fetch files over the phone or even over the Internet. You can also use the program to take remote control of a computer. Of course, the desktop PC has to be turned on, running Laplink and connected to a dedicated phone line.

I did come across one limitation of Laplink when I was trying to install a program on my notebook PC from a CD-ROM. My notebook doesn’t have a CD-ROM drive, so I wanted to use the desktop PC’s drive to load software on the portable machine. Laplink can’t do it.

Fortunately, there are other ways to do that, including one method for Windows 95 that requires a $10 cable. Windows 95 comes with a feature called Direct Cable Connection. If it’s installed on your machine, you’ll see it listed by clicking on Start, selecting Programs and then Accessories. If it’s not listed, you can install it by selecting Add/Remove programs from the Windows 95 Control Panel, clicking on the Windows Setup tab and double clicking on the Communications line.

Click the check box next to Direct Cable Connection, click OK and follow the instructions on the screen. You might be asked to insert your original Windows 95 CD-ROM. In many cases, the necessary files are already on a notebook PC in a directory called windows/options/cabs.

After you finish the process, you should be able to connect the two machines via a parallel or serial cable, run the Direct Cable Connection software on both machines and access any drive on either machine. That’s the theory, anyway. In reality, like so many other aspects of Windows 95, it doesn’t always work the way it’s supposed to. I’ve installed this on several computers, and eventually I always get it to work, but it sometimes takes a lot of trial and error before I’m successful.

There are some limitations. If you use the parallel port, you won’t be able to print while your “network” is running. You also must have the computers in the same room. Most direct connect cables are only about 6 feet long. You can buy serial cables up to 25 feet (you need a special serial cable called a “null modem” cable), but the connection speed will be quite slow.

Also, this is not a permanent setup. If you want to be able to access another machine with ease, you need to set up a local area network. That’s a bit more expensive, but once it’s installed, you have a fast and easy way not only to move files, but to share disk drives, printers and other resources. I just installed a “family area network” at my house--but that’s the subject of next week’s column.

Lawrence J. Magid can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]. His Web page is at https://www.larrysworld.com