UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

For 9 pin it is 2,3, &5. 3 as tx, 2 as rx.

JGT's suggestion of D connector to RJ45 still sounds good and connect with a cat5 patch cord. But you would probably need to get a insert/extract tool also.

Unless you have something special your parallel port should be female and your serials should be male at the computer. If you have a 25 male I would suspect a 25 pin serial.

25 pin female connectors were also a SCSI standard at about that time.

No luck finding any leftover serial connectors. I've placed an order for a cable. Says it has the read and write pins swapped so it should work. I'll post back when it comes in and when I cant get the software to work..
Thanks for the help so far!

I just got the cable in. I plugged it in to my UNIX computer and my Ubuntu.
I logged on to both of them, but Ubuntu let me down again. uucp isn't installed, and because it isn't on the internet, I cant install it.
Can anyone help me.

1. Install uucp on Ubuntu without internet. I downloaded the Quantal package from here. http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=uucp I can copy this DEB file to my Ubuntu 12.10 system, but I do not know how I can install it.

2. or a uucp for DOS or Windows??

Thanks for getting me this far.

I just got UUCP installed on my Ubuntu System. How should I set up the computers to talk to each other. I have run the uuname command on both systems, but neither system detects the other one. I would really appreciate your help.

You will have to configure them, of course... They won't psychically know the right ports to use, baud rates, et al.

I'm installing uucp so I can make sane suggestions.

[edit] uucp is a big, byzantine system that I can't make heads or tails of at first glance. See if you can make your systems communicate at all. On both systems:

Code:

stty -F /dev/whatever 9600

On one system:

Code:

cat /dev/whatever

On the other

Code:

echo "hello" > /dev/whatever

...where /dev/whatever is the appropriate serial device. It'd be /dev/ttyS0 or some such on your Ubuntu system for a hardwired port, /dev/ttyUSB0 for a USB converter, etc. I don't know what it would be on your UNIX system.

If your null-cable is working and settings are good and right ports are used, you should see 'hello' appear on the other end.

Once you have that going, on the sending system:

Code:

tar -cf - /path/to/file /path/to/folder /path/to/otherstuff | uuencode /dev/stdout > /dev/whatever

On the receiving system:

Code:

cat /dev/whatever | uudecode > file.tar

uuencode and uudecode should be present on systems with uucp.

Alrighty.
I'll figure out what the serial port is on the UNIX system and give this a go. I discovered that the UNIX system actually has 2 serial ports on it, so that probably wont make it easier to figure out what the port is.
I'll see what I can do and I will post back. Thank you very much.

Already a snag at stty. On Ubuntu the command

Code:

stty -F /dev/ttyS0

gave me no output to the screen. Is there supposed to be some sort of confirmation output that it worked?. I'm pretty sure that ttyS0 is the serial port, because if I try the command with ttyS1, I get a message along the lines of cant find device ttyS1.

Old UNIX is just going to fight all the way through. This is the list of all the tty devices listed in /dev

Code:

tty tty00 tty00h ty00s

I tried the command with all of the devices, but I get the message

Code:

unknown mode: -F

This is the usage for the old UNIX stty

Code:

usage: stty [-ag] [modes]

I will look for some documentation on the old version of stty. Will it be able to accomplish the same task as the Ubuntu stty, if so how.?

You forgot the 9600, add that and try again. If it didn't complain, it worked. Hmmm. The old-fashioned command would be stty 9600 < /dev/tty00s If tty00s is the right device. That, I'm not sure of at all.

stty is an old, old utility, old as terminals. -F is a modern extension but by and large it ought to behave mostly the same.