Is It possible to connect computers together by USB?

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iamshawnhill

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#19956 7-Mar-2008 21:32

i have a computer that i want to connect to another computer of minebut it dosent have a network port, and not really wanting to spend too much money by having a port put in i was wondering if you could connect them by USB
One of the COmputers is running Vista Basic and the other is Running PCLInuxOS 2007 (Linux)

freitasm

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Geekzone

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#115329 7-Mar-2008 21:56

You create a LAN over firewire. I am not sure Linux supports this though.

If both machines were Windows, there are some Belkin USB cables that allow you to transfer files between machines. You plug one of those on each PC and a File Manager shows up that allows you to move files. I have one of those here.

Bung

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#115330 7-Mar-2008 21:59

There are USB networking cables with an active unit in the middle eg DSE XH8177 but whether there's one with drivers for Vista is the question.

iamshawnhill

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#115342 7-Mar-2008 22:55

whilst browising for stuff that has been mentioned above, i found something called a USB Ethernet Adapter so you can plug a normal network cable into it. have you heard of them before?

rphenix

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#115542 9-Mar-2008 11:41

I hate to say it but whatever usb or other solution you look at will cost you far more time and effort than a $10 realtek pci network card and a bit of cat5e.

DLink makes a usb ethernet card for around $75 though im sure there is no vista support just ME, 2k,XP however I would say you will have more joy with something like a usb network card than those proprietry usb transfer cables.

weblordpepe

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#115641 10-Mar-2008 05:51

Many problems can be solved by a $0.50 PCI network card from the super shed.

webwat

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#118518 25-Mar-2008 12:35

Its possible to connect computers by parallel or serial too, but so slow and they still would not be networked. Any cheap network card is much better than USB things if you get a crossover cable to match it. Even better, get a Gigabit network card for each computer. They are getting pretty cheap these days too.

Time to find a new industry!