A: Amiga Explorer directly supports TCP/IP connections
and serial port connections (without TCP/IP software). Indirectly,
Amiga Explorer also supports all devices and connections for which
TCP/IP drivers exist for both the Amiga side and the Windows side.
This means that it is in theory possible to use Amiga Explorer
over all connection types which are supported by TCP/IP, including
Ethernet networks and serial and parallel cables. In practice,
TCP/IP is normally used only for Ethernet connections, because
serial connections can also be handled directly by Amiga Explorer
(without the need to install and configure TCP/IP and the serial
line IP driver, or SLIP), while parallel line IP drivers (PLIP)
which would allow the Amiga and Windows to establish a TCP/IP
connection over a parallel cable, are still under development (if
you know of an Amiga/Windows PLIP combination which works, please let
us know).
Unlike serial port and TCP/IP connections, which are
well-supported by the different operating system versions,
implementing a parallel port interface requires the development of
different drivers for the Amiga side, for Windows 95/98, for
Windows NT 4.0, and for the Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Server
2003/Vista/7/2008 driver model. Some
software packages have not considered this, and
implemented a low-level interface which directly accesses the
hardware, which may work well under DOS, but which fails in newer
operating systems such as Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows
XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008,
Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 10, or
even x64 versions of Windows in general. This is the main reason why Amiga Explorer does not directly
support a parallel port connection. We believe that the
development of PLIP drivers for various operating systems is
taking so much longer than SLIP (the serial equivalent of PLIP)
for similar reasons.
While we would love to be able to continually offer more
features and better support for all possible configurations, given
limited resources in a difficult moment for the Amiga we believe
that directly supporting parallel port connections would be not only
complex, but also not absolutely necessary. Amiga Explorer already
offers good, system-compliant support on all operating system
versions and for both low and high speed connections over the
serial interface (19.2 kbit/sec to 115 kbit/sec) and TCP/IP (up to
several Gbit/sec, using WiFi or Ethernet), including wireless links
when a Bluetooth serial adapter is used. Where speed is required,
Ethernet currently offers not only the best performance, but also
the best price/performance ratio. Additionally, PLIP drivers which
could immediately be used by Amiga Explorer for a parallel port
connection using TCP/IP may be coming soon.
When TCP/IP is installed, serial and Ethernet connections can
be used by multiple protocols at the same time, for example for
Amiga Explorer and to share a modem for
internet access.
