USB to Serial Adapters

[Malakai]

Has any one ever tried USB to serial adapters with worldgroup serial communications? Whether it be ghost, direct connect, or a modem?

[Toyduck]

Has any one ever tried USB to serial adapters with worldgroup serial communications? Whether it be ghost, direct connect, or a modem?

No, but I can't think of any reason why the NT version wouldn't work, as long as Windows sees it as a COM Port.

With a virtual machine however, I know that Microsoft VM 2007 does not see USB network adapters, and probably wouldn't see a USB serial adapter.

[Malakai]

I guess it can't hurt to try. I've been working on converting the servers completely to wifi, but as you probably know, each wifi card splits the signal in half, on wireless-b and g - not sure about A and N...

I've already tested out direct connections from win 98 to the worldgroup server via a null modem cable, which will be a good for configuring the worldgroup manager stuff with out taking up more wifi bandwidth, as well as not having to use a bridge, because it doesn't seem like many wifi cards work on windows 98, or at least they don't advertise for win 98.

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It would be great if you could run usb-serial adapters through vmware and either dos multitasking or multiple dos systems on one PC, but running one virtual machine seems to take up 100% cpu resources.

[Toyduck]

I guess it can't hurt to try. I've been working on converting the servers completely to wifi, but as you probably know, each wifi card splits the signal in half, on wireless-b and g - not sure about A and N...

I've already tested out direct connections from win 98 to the worldgroup server via a null modem cable, which will be a good for configuring the worldgroup manager stuff with out taking up more wifi bandwidth, as well as not having to use a bridge, because it doesn't seem like many wifi cards work on windows 98, or at least they don't advertise for win 98.

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It would be great if you could run usb-serial adapters through vmware and either dos multitasking or multiple dos systems on one PC, but running one virtual machine seems to take up 100% cpu resources.

With MS VM 2007 I routinely run WinXP, Vista and Ubunto Linux on one server and still have plenty of resources to run Backup.

With VMware I think it's how you fine tune it so it doesn't use all your resources. I only run one DOS box, so never had the problem, but it works well with XP and 2000 on a WinServer 2003 Enterprise.

(just for info Microsoft's Virtual Machine 2007 does NOT work on WinServer 2003 Enterprise, but does work extremely well on WinServer 2003 Standard.

I have a couple of wi/fi USB, I'll have to check the included software to see if it supports Win98. I'll let you know.

[Malakai]

Yeah, it'll be interesting to know if windows 98 will work on any type of wifi. One of the things that I've read about wifi, security-wise at least, is that service pack x y or z is required to run this type or that type of security.

That probably means if you're lucky, wep may be able to run in 98, but probably not wpa or wpa2, since windows '9x isn't being updated/supported any more.

Fortunately, virtual ethernet device drivers with vmware work with your wifi connection. That's how I got the DMA server running off of DOS on a win 2000 pro machine.

[Toyduck]

Yeah, it'll be interesting to know if windows 98 will work on any type of wifi. One of the things that I've read about wifi, security-wise at least, is that service pack x y or z is required to run this type or that type of security.

That probably means if you're lucky, wep may be able to run in 98, but probably not wpa or wpa2, since windows '9x isn't being updated/supported any more.

Fortunately, virtual ethernet device drivers with vmware work with your wifi connection. That's how I got the DMA server running off of DOS on a win 2000 pro machine.

Why the interest in Win98? - Just curious.

[Malakai]

For worldgroup manager stuff. Win 2000 crashes wgm often when doing admin stuff for some reason, and other newer systems, even with the patches, have really messed up looking color when using the worldgroup manager.

Like I said though, I'm using win 98 through a null modem cable straight to the worldgroup server, and that works fine with the worldgroup manager.

I'm not really interested in running win 98 on the network but just haven't seen any wifi cards advertised for it. So, it's more out of curiosity.

[Toyduck]

For worldgroup manager stuff. Win 2000 crashes wgm often when doing admin stuff for some reason, and other newer systems, even with the patches, have really messed up looking color when using the worldgroup manager.

Like I said though, I'm using win 98 through a null modem cable straight to the worldgroup server, and that works fine with the worldgroup manager.

I'm not really interested in running win 98 on the network but just haven't seen any wifi cards advertised for it. So, it's more out of curiosity.

Interesting, I'v been using WGM with Win 2000 for - well - quite awhile, and never had it crash or give me any problems. I agree with the messed up screen on XP resolution wise, but I have sever 2000 machines and WGM works flawlessly.

[Malakai]

I do have a newer version of windows 2000 on the computer that's running the DMA server, with like service pack 3 or 4 or whatever it is. So, I'll have to try it out and see if it works better than the old version I tried it with before.

The one with the older version is running my door game server.

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On another note, I've also wondered if you could actually use a real dos machine and a serial to ethernet server to run something like DOS QMODEM, COMIT, TELEMATE, or maybe an older DOS trade wars helper, etc with it.

Ya know, make the comm software think it's using a direct connection and then when the ethernet to serial server detects a connection (button press, I suppose) automatically telnet to a specified address.

There should be a way to make this work, with the right hardware, but telnet to serial servers are expensive, especially considering in this configuration, you'd be using a DOS pc that probably isn't worth 1/8th the price of the serial server itself.

[Malakai]

Well, I got a chance to try the wgm client on another pc running the newer sp on win 2000, and although I didn't spend a lot of time on it, it does seem like it's working with out crashing like the older version. So, that pretty much eliminates the need for a win 98 pc direct connected, to do wgm maintenance.

The PC that's running the door game server has given me problems before. So, it's probably about time to replace the motherboard, but damn, I have bought so much crap to get Nostalgia BBS back up and running that it's not even funny.

[Toyduck]

....but damn, I have bought so much crap to get Nostalgia BBS back up and running that it's not even funny.

I would never consider computer parts crap..!

[ccs]

....but damn, I have bought so much crap to get Nostalgia BBS back up and running that it's not even funny.

I would never consider computer parts crap..!

I run three computer with DOS 6.2 and Wordlgroup 2.0 all on Pent I 0r II's with only minium ram. 32megs or so. Verry cheep to put those systems togeather. Why run a DMA server under windows anything?

Joe

[Malakai]

I suppose I have just had overused, old computer stuff when it comes to DOS, because most of them seemed to either not work with the network card drivers or crash a little more often than I'd like when running worldgroup.

The last one, a p200mhz, actually wasn't that bad about crashing, but running vmware and windows makes it easier and faster to do backups. All I have to do is shut down the virtual host for a minute and then copy and paste the directory to another directory (And optionally write it to a cd-r), and it's backed up.

Also, I've moved the BBS completely to a wifi connection. The alternative would be to use a wifi bridge connected to the DOS system.