Connecting Two Computers Via Printer or Modem Cable Under Win95 Copyright 1996 Nelson Ford, PsL Needing to connect my notebook to my desktop computer recently, I checked the Win95 "Help" system to see if Win95 had something similar to the INTERSVR-INTERLNK programs in DOS 6. I came across the following: ===== "Using a parallel or serial cable to connect to another computer: "With Direct Cable Connection, you can gain access to shared folders on another computer, even when your computer is not on a network. If the other computer is connected to a network, you can also gain access to that network. For example, if you have a portable computer, you can use a cable to connect it to your work computer and network. "To set up a direct cable connection with another computer, click the Start button, point to Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Direct Cable Connection ['DCC'] "Note: If you do not see Direct Cable Connection on the Accessories menu, it is not installed. To find out how to install it, click Related Topics." ===== Naturally, the program wasn't there, so I clicked Related Topics, which brought up the Windows Help System "Topic" list. One of the topics was "Installing a Windows component...", which I assumed I was supposed to click on. Doing so brought up a help screen with a button for bringing up the "Add/Remove Programs" dialog. (Actually, it brought it up BEHIND the help window, so it took a while to figure out that something had actually happened. Now if you are like the average user, you may have never used this thing before. Its use is anything but intuitive and you no longer get any instructions to walk you through the installation of the DCC. This lack of specific instructions is the purpose of this file. I will try to fill in the gaps left by Win95's help system. Overview: Using DCC, one computer is the Host and the other is the Guest. You must specify on the Host which drives and folders the Guest can access. The Host cannot access drives/folders on the Guest. Hooking up the Computers: Two computers can be connected either through parallel (printer) ports or serial ports using special cables. The reason special cables are needed is to get the same connector at each end. You can get such cables at electronics stores and computer stores. If you can't find them, check the ads in Computer Shopper magazine. The serial cable is called a "null modem" cable. I don't know of a similar name for the printer cable, but my understanding is that the printer cable provides faster throughput. A. Using Add/Remove Programs to install the DCC: 1. If the "Windows Setup" page is not on top, click on its tab. 2. Only "Communications" should have a check mark next to it. Double-click on "Communications" to see the details. 3. Select "Dial-Up Networking" and "Direct Cable Connection" and click Ok. 4. Click the Apply button. (You need the Win95 CD or disks.) 5. Close the Add/Remove Programs window. Note: When I installed DCC on my desktop from the Win95 CD-ROM, it worked fine, but during the same installation on my notebook, I got a message saying that a couple of different files could not be found on the CD. I told it to continue anyway and the DCC worked all right. B. Configuring Networking: 1. Click on Win95's Start button, Setup, and Control Panel. 2. Double-click the Network icon in Control Panel. This should bring up a window with three tabs: Configuration, Identification, and Access Control. In the Configuration page, the minimum you should see listed in the Components list is "Client for Microsoft Networks", "Dial-Up Adapter", and "NetBEUI [protocol]". If you do not see one or more of these, click on Add. 3. The Add button brings up a window in which you can select a type of component to add, Client, Adapter, and Protocol. Select the type for any of the components mentioned above which are misssing and install them. For example, if NetBEUI is missing, double-click on Protocol and in the next window, click on Microsoft, which will bring up a list of MS protocols, including NetBEUI. Do NOT click "Have Disk", just double-click on the protocol name (NetBEUI). 4. Once you have installed all the necessary components, look to see if "File and printer sharing for Microsoft Networks" is in the component list. If it is not, click on the "File and Print Sharing" button. 5. The Configuration page is finished. Click on Identification, fill in that page, click on Access Control and make a selection there, then close the Network window by clicking Ok. Windows will copy the necessary files from your Win95 CD and then restart Windows. C. Specify Drives & Folders to Share: You must specify at least one drive or folder for the Host computer to share, or the direct connection will not be made. 1. Double-click on My Computer. If you want to share one or more drives, click on a drive icon to highlight it, then click on the File menu and the "Sharing" line, which brings up the Properties window. 2. Select the Sharing page in Properties. 3. Click on "Shared As". You can keep whatever Share Name is the default or change it. Do NOT put a drive spec in the name. For example, "C" is an ok name, but using "C:" will just confuse things. Mapping is done on the Guest computer to give a drive or folder a drive spec for the Guest machine to use. 4. Make other selections as you see fit and then Apply and close. 5. Repeat this for any other drives or folders you wish to share. If you specify a drive to share, you do not HAVE to specify folders on the drive in addition. However, if the Guest computer mainly wants to access a specific folder, it is easier if on the Host you use My Computer to find the folder and specify Sharing for it. Then the folder will appear in a list on the Guest. D. Run DCC: 1. Assuming you have hooked up the computers, you should now be ready to run DCC. Click on Win95 Start, Programs, Accessories, and the Direct Cable Connection icon. 2. On the Host machine, the Settings box should say: "Host computer set up to listen on Parallel cable on LPT1" (or serial, if you are using a null modem cable). Click on the Change button if any of this is incorrect. 3. Click on Listen. 4. Assuming you have completed the above installation on the Guest computer, go to that machine and run DCC on it. The Settings should read: "Guest computer set up to connect to host using Parallel cable on LPT1" (or serial). Click on Change if necessary. Click on Connect when ready. Note: When connecting, the system says "Checking on password" even if you disabled password protection. Ignore it. 5. If the connection failed, press F1 to bring up Win95's help system. As bad as Win95's Help is, it actually has a pretty good walk-thru for DCC problems, although some critical info is left out. Note: If you get the message that the parallel connection is disconnected, it does NOT mean that your cable is not connected. It means that the connection failed because something in the above installation was not done right. (Real helpful error message, isn't it?) E. Mapping Drives/Folders on the Guest: When connection is made, a window comes up to show the drives and folders the Guest has access to on the Host. If all you want to do is copy files, you can do it from this window in the usual way. However, if you want to run a program and have it access the files on the Host machine, you must map the shared folders to a drive letter (or in English: assign a drive letter to a folder). 1. To do this, simply click on a folder, 2. Click on the File menu. 3. Click on Map Network Drive, and 4. Assign a drive letter to it. Notice that no matter how deeply nested a folder is inside a set of other folders, if you assign a letter to that internal folder, then when you access that folder with another program, you do NOT have to specify the full path on the Host machine, just the drive letter. For example, if you want to access \\Host\MyEditor\Biz\Vendors and the Host has specifically Shared that folder so that it appears on the list in the Guest's window and the Guest has assigned drive letter F: to that path, then using a program to open a file in that folder, you would just select drive F: and the contents of the Vendors folder would be displayed. This might cause a little confusion. For example, both my Hearts game and my Spades game support network play between up to 4 people. Two people could play using DCC, but both machines must access the same physical drive and directory. The Host may set up a directory for that purpose on his machine as C:\NETPLAY and specify it for Sharing. However, the Guest would probably have to assign some other letter to the directory/folder since the Guest has C: as his own hard drive. So say the Guest assigns the letter E: (an otherwise unused drive letter) to the folder. Now in CardShark Hearts/Spades, you are asked to specify the drive and path for the shared directory/folder. The Host would select the C: drive and the \NETPLAY path, but the Guest would specify the E: drive and would not have to select a directory, since \NETPLAY would be the only directory available on "E:". Even though the drive letters are not the same, they ARE the same *physical* drive and directory, and that is all that matters. F. Minimize DCC Once the connection is made, just minimize the DCC window. Don't click Close until you are ready to end the connection. Note that on the Guest machine, you can bring up the DCC window and click on View Host at any time. If you did not assign drive letters to any of the Host's drives or folders, this is the only way to access them. I hope this saves you some of the hours of frustration that I went through trying to set up DCC. If you find errors or omissions in here, please let me know and I will correct them. You can send them to Nelson Ford at 74777,3465@compuserve.com or call me at 713-524-6394 or FAX me at 713-524-6398. If you did not get this on my Web page, there may be a later edition of this file there (http://206.109.101.6).