Hello Ken,

  KH> Well, Jean, I tried this (approx. 20 foot) cable...

6m is probably a bit long for a parallel cable.  I am surprised that this
worked at all, let alone in byte mode. For that kind of distance it's
probably best to use serial cables and nice, fast UART chips.

  KH> ...I also tried setting the LPT ports on both machines
    > to 'standard parallel' mode.

Standard parallel ports are unidirectional (except for a few status input
signals), which is why things like PLIP and LapLink have to transfer data a
nybble at a time.  EPP and ECP ports are both bidirectional.  ECP ports
apparently can be DMA driven, given suitable drivers.

  KH> I've yet to try it with 'real' legacy ports, though;
    > maybe that would solve the mystery (?).

I suspect that older parallel ports used more powerful line driver chips. 
Todays are probably built into the chipset (making the implications of
harming your parallel port more severe).  I recently picked up some
parallel port expansion cards for experimentation, because I don't want to
risk the one built into the mainboard.

- Andy Ball.

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