by Jerry Martin

That time of year again - turkeys, plum puddings, warm log fires and buckets of time to play with one's beloved Atari! My project for this Christmas was one which I have been wishing to try out ever since my brother decided to dethrone my Falcon MKX with a second-user HP Vectra which he insisted he needed for college. My being at the other end of the country for most of the year meant that any argument I put up stood little chance.

The PC, running Windows 2000, worked flawlessly until he realised that he couldn't use my Epson GT-5000 flat-bed scanner (parallel port version) or the Iomega SCSI ZIP drive. The Epson only works on older versions of Windows, and even on the Atari requires a proprietary parallel cable which also makes use of the MIDI-out port. This ensured that my Atari was to be needed and used once more!

Atari and PC negotiate a truce
And so I decided to create the West of Ireland's first PC-Atari LAN. Several days rummaging around the internet and experimenting with configuration files finally got the system up and running to my satisfaction. Now all devices attached to each machine are shared, including the internet connection. The schematic gives an idea of the set-up. The Falcon is running MagiC 6.01.

Luckily the PC had been supplied with Windows 2000: this is of course Windows NT which has been designed with networking in mind. Hence most of the networking software I needed on the PC side was already to hand.

To begin I needed some way of connecting the two machines. I had a "Laplink" cable lying around - essentially a null-modem cable used to connect two computers via their serial ports - and thankfully I had two serial ports free!

Next I needed a working STinG set-up on the Atari. Prior to this I had used iConnect from ASH so I had to spend some time ensuring I had the latest drivers and components from Ulf Ronald Anderson's STinG page before going any further. It goes without saying that HSMODEM is required for reliable networking.

It is far easier to establish the connection from the PC side as, thanks to Olivier Booklage, we have the necessary Atari software to fool it into "dialling" the Atari. Dial-up server is a small application which listens to your chosen serial port. On detecting modem dial commands from the PC it carries out the connection chatter that your PC would normally expect if it dialled an ISP. Once complete, it releases control of the port to STinG and the two machines can communicate via TCP. Installation of the dial-up server requires that STiNG's ROUTE.CFG file is edited to direct all TCP/IP activity through the chosen Atari serial port. In my case, the single default route reads:

0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 Modem 2 10.0.1.3

(I chose 10.0.1.3 as the Atari's IP and 10.0.1.2 for the PC)

While PPP has its advantages, I decided to stick with a SLIP connection as this was in the long run easier to set up. The screen-shots below show my configuration on the Atari side.

On the PC, first a new "modem" had to be installed. Using the "generic 33600 modem" driver, the port settings were matched to those on the Atari. Note that even though the driver name indicates a speed of 33,600 bps, this does not reflect the final port speed you can choose. This driver is used merely because it doesn't flood the Atari with irrelevant initialisation strings. Using Hyperterminal this modem was tested by dialling "0ATARI" and the dial-up server sprang into action prompting for log-in and password.

Happy that the basics were in order, a new dial-up connection was created. under the Networking tab, the dial-up server type was set to SLIP, and in the advanced options, I entered the IP addresses of the PC as above.

Now the moment of truth came and after double-clicking on my new "connect to Atari" icon, I was rewarded with an "All devices connected" dialog.

Now that both machines were talking, here came the fun part of setting up some clients and servers on both machines.

Serving justice
I installed Vassilis Papathanassiou's FTP Server on the Atari and registered three "users". ZIPDisk, Scantmp and jtmartin. The first two users were then installed as FTP shortcuts on the Windows desktop linking directly to the Zip drive and to a temporary directory on my Atari hard disk used for storing scans. The third user name was for myself to access drive U:\ on the Atari for full access to the system.

Could I use that printer on the Atari, I wondered. Dr Thomas Redelberger's LPR client came to the rescue. LPR/LPD allows for printer sharing on UNIX networks. It allows the client computer to send print documents to a print queue on a remote machine. It operates best under MagiC and NVDI, creating a new device in U:\DEV to which NVDI can print directly using the "Print to File" option. Windows 2000 has a LPD server which allows my Deskjet 600 to appear on the network. This software had to be installed from the Windows 2000 Professional installation CD. For other versions of Windows there is a free "LPDWIN" distribution which does the trick. Apparently LPDWIN takes a bit of configuring, but I can assure you that once this is up and running it's very impressive! Papyrus documents on my Falcon appear as if by magic from the printer connected to the PC.

Moving back over to the PC I found the freeware AnalogX proxy which allows the Atari to share the PC's internet connection. Once the proxy is up and running (thankfully with almost no configuration) CAB is set to use 10.0.1.2 (the PC) as a proxy server. As long as the PC is connected to the internet, the Falcon can use the internet connection to browse the web.

To add the finishing touches, I found Windows FTP and web servers on the Windows 2000 installation CD which gave the Falcon access to the PC drives.

So at the end of it all, I have a very functional network which despite his initial reservations, my brother finds quite impressive! Both machines can be used simultaneously on the internet, the printer is available to both, and of course both can use the coveted Zip drive and scanner!

Conclusion
In today's high-paced world, speed is always a concern. I have to say that the speed of the network surprised me. Both machines communiate via the serial ports at 115 Kbps, which when transferring files via FTP translates into an effective speed of about 10 KB/sec. Which is five times faster than the internet connection I'm used to!

The interesting point of this network is that it is a simple matter to network other Ataris to the Falcon, and indeed other PCs to the PC. Once the great divide between the PC and Atari has been bridged, anything is possible. I'm now eyeing that old 1040STE which was my introduction to computing. Time to wipe off the dust I think!

Happy networking!

MyAtari magazine - Feature #10, December 2002