JerryTerrifying wrote:Wait so that set up is just each Saturn's netlink plugged into that magical box?
Yup. It's a phone line simulator. It simulates the dial tone and the ring signal, and provides power to the line. Really, that's all the Netlinks need - once it's started and the Netlinks are convinced that they've successfully connected, they can just go and do their thing. The box doesn't have to do any more than that. It just acts like a regular, analog phone line, which is passive - no encoding or decoding like a digital line. And since the effective distance between the Netlinks is mere feet rather than miles, the latency is effectively nil. As long as you have no crazy EM interference going on (I babysat at one house years ago that did), it should work fine.
I knew it would work as long as it worked as advertised. I just didn't want to risk all that money on something that I didn't know for sure would work as advertised.
The only things that keep it from working by just plugging a phone cable between the two are the things that were listed above - power, a dial tone, and a ring signal. The dialing Saturn needs to know that it's connected to a working phone line, so it listens for that dial tone. The power is needed because oftentimes modems don't have the power to push the data along the lines themselves - having the power there gives them the oomph they need. And the receiving Saturn waits for the ring signal from the first, indicating that there's a connection to be established.
Theoretically, you could build two Netlink modems that wouldn't need a dial tone or a ring tone, and could provide enough power to a line that they wouldn't need the line to be powered. However, your systems would have to be right next to each other - a situation that really didn't happen often back when the Netlink was built. It was built to work on analog phone lines, because that's what was readily available, and almost everyone had.
I have my Saturns, I have some of my games, I have a RasPi. Gotta put all this stuff together!
)
)