LinkRight 1.1E ****IMPORTANT****** LinkRight 1.1E requires the 1.1E driver. Don't try to use it with the LRPAR from 1.1 or 1.1D, it won't work. Also, a system running 1.1E can only connect to another system that is also running 1.1E. In other words, make sure you update all your executables and all your machines to 1.1E. So if you have any problem, reboot both systems and watch as the drivers are loaded and make sure you see a line that says "LinkRight Driver Installed Version 1.1E". Next, start LinkRight. The first screen asks you to choose Local or Remote. At the bottom of that screen is the version number. It should say "Version 1.1E". LRCLONER and LRDOS prominently display the version when started. ******************* ****IMPORTANT****** The MOST common user error for those using LRCLONER is starting a clone operation and having the files transferred to C:\TEMP. Some users try to fix this by starting LRCLONER from the root directory of C:. This only causes other problems. The proper method of cloning is to start LRCLONER from the C:\TEMP directory. Once a connection is established, from the Local system change directories on the Remote system by double clicking on the line with ".." (you also have to change directories on the Local system to get to the root). Now you can start transferring files and they will go to the proper location. ******************* Turbomode (in the Options menu of LinkRight when in Local mode) should be turned off initially. Also, Turbomode is read and set once when you establish a connection. To change Turbomode, change the option, disconnect if you are currently connected, and do a re-connect. If you have no trouble with Turbomode off, you can try Turbomode on and get a speed boost. The LinkRight parallel port driver can now be used in interupt driven mode or polled mode. The default is polled, which matches the default of PRINT01.SYS in OS/2 Warp 3.0. Interupt driven mode has some problems. I've had some of my test systems lock up completely when used in Turbomode with interupt mode. The same system does not lock up when Turbomode is off. None of my test systems have any problems when using polled mode. Many gigabytes transferred successfully!! For LRCLONER, you no longer need EAUTIL.EXE and CMD.EXE in the C:\TEMP directory. This should make cloning easier. You still need the temp directoy and LRCLONER.EXE should be started from this directory. Although I said this for 1.1C it turned out not to be true. I really mean it this time!! The complete list of options for LRPAR.SYS are DEVICE=LRPAR.SYS /Q:7 /P /A:3BC /M where: /Q:7 uses IRQ7 or /Q:5 uses IRQ5. These are the only IRQs supported. Interupt driven mode can only be used if PRINT01.SYS or PRINT02.SYS also uses the same interupt. If no /Q option is selected, polled is assumed. /P is for polled. This is a useless option, since it is the default. /A:3BC or /A:378 or /A:278 select the address of the LPT port for LinkRight to use. If this parameter is used, only one address can be specified. Then, when you select Connect from the LinkRight menu, no matter which LPT port you select, either LPT1, LPT2 or LPT3, LinkRight will use the address specified. If this parameter is not included, LinkRight reads the BIOS info at bootup time to get the LPT addresses. /M is to specify MicroChannel machines. For some MicroChannel systems when booted from bootable floppies, LinkRight would not see that it was MicroChannel and would assume an ISA bus. This caused the driver to fail. So if you boot your MicroChannel system from floppies and the LinkRight driver displays a message at bootup time saying an ISA bus was found, use this parameter to fix the problem. The preferred and suggested mode of use is no parameters on the LRPAR.SYS line in CONFIG.SYS. You can add parameters if there are any problems. Serial mice and slow systems are a problem when using the parallel port. Bump the packet size down to 128 bytes and turn Idle time transfers on and it may improve response with the mouse. PS/2 style mice are not a problem. If you find responsiveness is a problem and you are willing to work with me, I'll create a special driver for your particular systems to improve mouse responsiveness. It may take a few tries to get it right, so patience would be required. Obviously, when I get it working well on your systems, I'll incorporate it into the full LinkRight product. Bump up the Retry Warning Delay option to 9 and you will not get any of those annoying Retry Warnings. LinkRight will try forever if this value is 9. Of course, you won't know if there is a problem either. Major bugs fixed with this version!! There is a bug with the C Set compiler and Toolkit (I think) that caused previous versions of LinkRight to sometimes not copy files or make the receiving file zero bytes. I've worked around this compiler bug and now that I have it fixed for LinkRight, I'll be reporting it to IBM. For the record, IBM may already have a fix for this compiler bug (or I may not be using the API call correctly), so I can't really complain too loudly until I check into this. If you're interested in the details, check the OS2DF1 forum where you'll see a complete report. I used a different API and it seems to work OK now. My thanks to Alan McClean in Vermont and Hans Joachim Lippke in Germany for pointing this bug out to me. Also, my apologies to any users who were bitten by this bug. It was not an easy bug to find (some users may disagree, but they probably just automatically find any bugs) and I had to transfer over 50 Megs at a time to get it to fail. One user complained about updating the Remote system screen just to display a "dot". I didn't see any problem on my systems, and it looked like a minor nit. But during final testing of this version, I grabbed my slowest system, turned the hardware turbo switch off on it, and watched for about a second for it to refresh the screen. Very annoying. There is a workaround available, though. From an OS/2 command prompt, run LRCLONER T LPT1 on the Remote system. You won't lose any functionality and won't be annoyed by the slow screen refresh. For cloning systems, there is an alternative method that should be used in some cases. Boot both systems from bootable floppies and run LRCLONER T LPT1 from one system and LRCLONER S C: LPT1 from the other system. Run LRCLONER with no parameters to check the proper usage. Since both systems are booted from floppies, you don't have to worry about locked files. I've been told you have to do this way if you're using COMM manager or Extended Services. As you can see, LinkRight is up to version 1.1E. A new version has been appearing about once a month. I would encourage all users to check for a new version occasionally because a new version with features you want or bugs fixed could be available. If you have used most of the various versions of LinkRight, you have seen substantial improvements in all the new releases. Expect such improvements to continue. I try not to bash IBM (I leave that to the Ziffers; they seem to enjoy it) but something you should know about. Serial support is significantly weaker in Warp than in previous versions of OS/2. The same systems that support hi-speed serial transfers with LinkRight using 2.1 will lock up Warp. Oops!! For serial port users of LinkRight, I would recommend using Med speed (19.2 Kbps) rather than Hi speed (57.6 Kbps). I'll see if I can get something for higher speed in a future release. For now, I would urge LinkRight users to go to parallel ports if possible. It is much faster, better tested, and more reliable. There is an additional file called LRPAR1.SYS which only a very few users will find helpful. It is a slower par port driver with extra delays for users with 1994 style CPUs and 1985 style parallel ports. In other words, if your CPU is a Pentium or perhaps 486 100Mhz and your parallel port is ancient and slow, try this driver. I've only found one user who needed it but thought I would include it just in case. You should probably call Rightware Techie Support and try everything else before using this driver. Good luck and happy computing!! Jeff Tremble President Rightware Inc.