Hi, I recently took one of my old Pentium 3 machines and installed Redhat 9.0 on it. I also use a Windows XP latop as my primary machine.

Please could someone tell me how I can connect the two so that I can share files between them using my parallel cable? I'm quite new to Linux so basic steps would be good if you can.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me.

Anybody? Please? I really need to know and I can't find answers anywhere else.

Some places you may want to look into are the man pages for ifconfig. I know that modern linux kernels can support doing TCP/IP over USB to commuincate between, say, a Zaurus handheld and a Linux PC. The problem (imo) is going to be on the Windows end: you're going to have to somehow convince your Windows PC to use the parallel port for TCP/IP communication as well. I'm not even sure if this is possible though. I'd suggest looking into alternative steps - like using crossover CAT5 cable to link them up, and if necessary getting a USB ethernet adapter for the WinXP laptop (I know they're evil, but this is in case you're already using the ethernet on the WinXP laptop) In short, using that parallel port to get Windows to talk to Linux is going to be well nigh impossible - it'd be hard enough just getting Linux to talk to Linux over parallel.

I would love to find some way for this to work. I am trying to do EXACTLY the same thing - link a RedHat9 desktop with a WinXP laptop using a parallel cable. So far I have had little luck just finding information on the topic.

True, I could always get an ethernet router or a null modem cable, but I only need to transfer about 8GB of files from the xp laptop to the linux box. I don't need an ongoing connection between the two and already have a perfectly good two-ended parallel cable.

Any help would be wonderful. I dont know where else to turn at this point.

Setup you Linux box with FTP and use a Cross over Cable between the two Ethernet devices.

Install a simple FTP client on the XP box and when you need to transfer between the two fire up the FTP client on the XP box and do the transfer.

Just another alternative.