Question about serial cables

I’ve been transferring data to and from my old A3010 recently, and I’m getting tired of using slow and unreliable floppy disks.
I’m wondering if there’s some way to connect the A3010 directly to my PC via the serial port.

My question is, would it be theoretically possible to get a generic serial to serial cable, and run it directly from the acorn’s serial port to my PC’s serial port, and then have them communicate? Or would I need to rewire the cable somehow, or get some other kind of special cable?

Of course I’d probably need to write my own software for the Acorn and the PC that would get them to communicate and transfer files across, but my question is mainly if this idea is possible or not, and would an unmodified generic serial-to-serial cable be OK, or would it need modification/rewiring/etc.

You should be able to set up a serial network and then transfer the files via FTP or similar. http://www.serial-networking.fsnet.co.uk/index.html has lots of useful information for this. Not sure what serial cable you’d need though (I think I’ve only used serial networking between a RiscPC and a PC)

I’ve never used them myself:
‘Serial Link’
Link to software here http://www.cjemicros.co.uk/products/CJE-QL2M
or
Serial Net from iSV Products “Simple home network for 2 computers includes printer sharing, multitasking file transfer etc.”
We don’t have it stock! Try 3QD?

Edit: On further thought I suspect the above is for RISC OS to RISC OS comms not to a PC

I think I’ve only used serial networking between a RiscPC and a PC

An A3010 to a PC should work with the same cable and probably the same software.

I’m wondering if there’s some way to connect the A3010 directly to my PC via the serial port.

Yes.

The A3010 is new enough that it will support the use of a standard null modem (crossover) cable, not the bodge that older Archimedes machines required.
The A3010 is pretty slow, so you may find it works best with 19200bps. By all means try faster, but don’t be surprised if it struggles.

As for the cable, make sure it is a “null modem” or “crossover” cable. This is important for two reasons – firstly the obvious (Tx at one end must be wired to Rx at the other) and also because you’ll want the same plug on each end. A proper null modem cable may also have the flow control crossed over so RTS/CTS can be used. Cheap cables may not have it connected at all. :-/

You’ll need some comms software for RISC OS. If you don’t already have Hearsay or ArcTerm7, go here and download Connector. That comes with blockdrivers and supports all the good file transfer protocols, it’s all you need to get going.

Does your PC have HyperTerm installed? This is usual for XP/Vista/7 but I don’t know about later versions.

Set the comms software on both ends to the same settings (start with 19200 baud, 8N1).

Type on one machine. You should see the text appear on the other. If you see gibberish, the serial rate or protocol is incorrect. Play around with the A3010 to see if you can get it to match the PC (because I’ve noticed that regardless of what you tell HyperTerm, it’ll often go ahead and do what it damn well pleases according to the hardware settings in Device manager).

Now type on the other machine to make sure the link works well both ways.

Now archive your files. Don’t transfer them to the PC ‘raw’ as I’m sure you know the PC will muck up a lot of it (filetypes, etc).

Configure the RISC OS software to use Zmodem. Zmodem performs a CRC check, and can support resending damaged blocks (plus some other stuff) so the resultant file should arrive intact.

From there, it is pretty much draggy-droppy to push the files to the PC. [I don’t remember if HyperTerm can auto-detect incoming transfers, or if you need to tell it to start, I last did this some 20 years ago!; either way, it shouldn’t present problems]

• Option! The cheap-hack approach for getting stuff done with minimal fuss. It’ll actually work if you put the computers back to back, then find three bits of wire (like those hook-up wires you get in children’s electronics kits) and poke them into the serial ports of each machine (machine 1 and machine 2) as follows: GND1 to GND2. TX1 to RX2. RX1 to TX2. Then run the link slow enough that data doesn’t get ‘lost’.

Experience: I used to run a BBS, wrote a bunch of low level serial stuff for RISC OS and DOS¹, and have used this method numerous times because it was simpler than getting Windows 3.11 to talk to my A5000’s ethernet card. I managed it in the end, but the serial stuff worked just as well, even the three-wire method. ;-)

¹ Back in the mid-ninties I couldn’t afford that DOS comms program that everybody wanted, so I wrote my own in TurboPascal. Didn’t do Zmodem (my brain didn’t get itself around calculating CRCs) but it did pretty much everything else that was useful (and I even made a distinction between VT100 and ANSI which is more than one can say for Nettle ;-) ).

Connector is a really fine piece of software – but the version Richard linked to is not the latest, look here instead. An alternative is Hearsay 2, which David Pilling offers for free now from here

Use a standard null modem cable. Use the InternalPC blockdriver on the A3010 side. The A3010 should manage 57600 baud easily. Using David Pillings SerialBuffer may make transfers much more reliable (especially if the A3010 is the receiving side).

Aside: has anyone noticed that Connector is now part of the ROOL “Bonus Binaries” download? Was this formally announced?

No formal announcement that I’ve seen, but it was noted in the CVS log.

Big thanks for all the information. I’ve downloaded Connector and ordered a null modem cable and a USB serial interface/adapter thing (it turns out that my computer doesn’t have a serial port). I’m looking forward to trying this out.

I know Connector is in CVS and Hearsay is on Store. The reason I pointed to the older version of Connector is because it is an older system and I wanted to link to something that should “just work” without other dependencies (such as the 26/32 neutral CLib)…

The A3010 can manage 57600? I seem to recall my A5000 struggled with doing that reliably which is one of the reasons why I got myself an sp_dual podule. ;-)

bq.The A3010 can manage 57600?

Bear in mind that the cables need to be very short for reliability on higher speeds.

Note also that most PeeCee serial comms needs a loop on the DTR DSR pair to bring the link up.

Whoo, last time I looked at stuff like that was back in the 90’s

I just wanted to say thanks again, I finally got my USB to serial cable in the mail today, and everything’s working great.
Here’s a photo in case anyone’s interested:
http://dusthillguy.ddns.net/folder/files/quickupload/serial.jpg