Unboxing and Enjoying LapLink V from 1993

Purchased a sealed, new old stock boxed copy of LapLink 5, so let's check it out! Let's spend some time casually perusing the box contents, setting it up in MS-DOS, and transferring some files using a LapLink cable over an accelerated parallel port.

[@kvothesixstring763]

“I’m just rambling about computers” - LGR That’s kind of why we are here.

[@Shailas.Darkleigh]

True that...

[@BigboiiTone]

Correct.

[@dabigbadwolf5081]

Rambling about computers would be a good podcast name :)

[@BigboiiTone]

@@dabigbadwolf5081 yes

[@frankowalker4662]

Agreed.

[@TonyDeCoste]

Holding off on watching this until I've seen his reviews for LapLink 1 through 4 so I don't run across any spoilers

[@johnromberg]

We don't talk about LapLink 2! Some wounds never heal...

[@naota3k]

Good man. LapLink IV was a classic.

[@offrails]

LapLink 3 was great for copying Doom files between a pair of 486s. Never got to try LapLink 1 and 2 though, maybe I should.

[@ericmdk]

lmfao Tony = )

[@ariana-is-ok]

Ah, blood sacrifice has been made. Very standard.

[@cujoedaman]

The fact that it happened with the box and not the knife makes it more enjoyable :D

[@falken_gt4]

When I started my IT career I soldered my own lap link parallel cable together, it was a right of passage for my job and everyone made one and got a copy of Laplink on a copied floppy. I still have the cable complete with letter and number stickers from a blank TDK cassette tape!

[@SimonQuigley]

LOL, yep, I made mine out of 2 printer cables that I hacked the Centronics ends off. I stripped all the wires, and taped the insulation to a bit of paper, so then I could use a continuity tester to work out which wire was connected to which pin on each end, only 50 wires to work out.. I was using interlnk and intersvr though.

[@TheDrunkenMug]

Cool story 😀👍

[@TheDrunkenMug]

@@SimonQuigley very cool story aswell ! 😮😀

[@oz_jones]

Cool!

[@falken_gt4]

@@SimonQuigley yeah, something similar, chopped the end off a printer cable and we had some male DB25 connectors to strip and solder to.

[@johnsimon8457]

That “initiate a transfer on a schedule” feature in the manual makes me wonder if someone built an ersatz backup solution out of a whole web of these null modem cables in an office in the late 80’s. I remember trying to transfer a hundred megs via one of these and never got the connection to work in windows. Instead I wound up transferring it one floppy at a time. This was when individual CD-Rs were like $15 ....Flash memory changed so much.

[@Kosackk]

I remember this "teacher" installing DukeNukem on one of the PCs we had at the leisure center i went to for kids, showing it to us kids in secret, we kids had to be really lowkey about it so other teachers would not find out that teacher installed it on one of the two computers we had there, this was around 1999, i was 9 years old! Good times! It was so exciting watching him play, we also got to try it ofc!

[@Toonrick12]

Which one? 1, 2, or 3D?

[@marquiis]

6:50 "by breaking this seal you accept to Terms and Conditions" - break the sleeve without touching the seal

[@oglack6137]

I can just imagine Stewart Cheifet being blown away by this on some dusty old episode of The Computer Chronicles

[@DyslexicChris]

Stewart: "So, tell us how this works Clint." Clint: "Well, all we need to..." Stewart: "(interrupts), Thats it for this week's Computer Chronicles - I'm Steward Cheifet, see you next time"

[@brandonupchurch7628]

He was so pushy, although they had a fairly tight time slot to fit a lot of information in and they had a budget to work in, while I liked how Gary could ramble all day, it wasn't necessarily the best fit for a TV show.

[@JackBandicootsBunker]

@@brandonupchurch7628 The upside of that was that it would cut short any attempts of marketing, it tried to be objective that way. I think Stewart did talk about it as well.

[@nickwallette6201]

“Have you ever wished there was an easy way to synchronize files from your laptop to your desktop? Maybe you’re at a user’s group meeting and would like to pirate some software, but you didn’t bring any floppy disks. Well a new product from Traveling Software might be just what you need. Wendy Woods has the story.”

[@fluffycritter]

@@JackBandicootsBunker They probably also had to avoid marketing attempts what with being on PBS and having very strict guidelines around sponsorship and product placement.

[@SabretoothBarnacle]

I use Laplink 3 too sometimes... just for nostalgic reasons as it was the school administrator's tool of choice on our 186/286 based network... I miss the old days💻💻💻💻

[@chrisfratz]

@Wang Dong Hey, as a 20 year old I approve the use of old software

[@hazel2409]

@Wang Dong shut up. I’m a zoomer and even I approve

[@sketchesofpayne]

@Wang Dong I wish people realized how stupid this phrase makes them sound. Especially when the person they're saying it to wasn't complaining about anything.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@Wang Dong that'd be genX

[@cyruscuckler3495]

Clint: The only man excited to see a yellow parallel cable.

[@IngwiePhoenix]

And a double-headed blue serial cable. :)

[@dfjelddalen]

LapLink solved so many file transfer problems for me in the nineties. The special cables were superb and really impressed my fellow nerds at the time.

[@TheJonathanc82]

Oh the days before everyone had a home network. You don’t get this level of excitement from a network share anymore.

[@Scorpious187]

Wow... this takes me back. Back to the days when I read through Scott Mueller's "Upgrading and Repairing PCs - 2nd Edition" cover to cover in less than a week because I was super interested in learning how computers worked... Those were much simpler times, but also much more difficult times. lol.

[@lwispe]

I love old software designed for ultra-specific needs like this. Especially since it came in a fancy box with a 300-page manual. Made it feel special, ya know? It wasn't just a simple utility bundled with an os without even a proper readme file. It commanded respect.

[@ericmdk]

Faq > readme?

[@thedungeondelver]

I remember at my IT job in the mid/late 90s - we had a washing-machine sized crate full of laplink cables, due to how many copies of that the company bought!

[@BigboiiTone]

So glad you included the "enjoying" bit to the title. Enjoyment is the biggest part of videos like this. I LOVE this stuff and i ENJOY it!!

[@offrails]

"Look behind you - a four headed cable!"

[@mvl71]

You link like a cow

[@Ned47628]

I really could have done with this back in the 90s when I wanted to try the Quake demo on my 486DX. The PC didn't have a cd drive so I copied it from another pc using spanned zip files. Seam to remember I didn't have enought disks so was having to reuse them. It took a long time and the results were disappointing. Quake on a 25mhz 486 is basically turn based.

[@oz_jones]

*shudders*

[@MusicFanatical1]

I was impressed how each PC knew the "name" of the other (Packard Bell / Thinkpad). I didn't realize parallel/serial port protocols supported precise hostname identifiers before USB.

[@casualretrocollector]

Back in 92 I remember watching my dad use laplink to dial via modem into his computer at work.

[@KenMrKLC]

I love seeing these old items that were out of range of price as a youngin' ... Especially a sealed box ....Its like double special because you fill the "I wanted and could afford" wants and the nostalgia of it... Fun stuff

[@crescentfresh8001]

"LapLink" would have been a great name for the portable Zelda games.

[@TheBigBentley911]

When I got ahold of my first copy of laplink as a kid, I thought it was the most amazing thing ever.

[@LMacNeill]

Back in the '90s when I was doing on-site repair of computers, this was an absolute *requirement* to have in the tool kit. I still have those blue and yellow cables in a box somewhere around here... And, yes, connecting the 9-pin serial on one end and the 25-pin serial on the other end will work perfectly well. Did it lots of times back in the day.

[@dos4gwexe]

This one brings back some fun memories! I used LapLink to copy Photoshop 4.0 from one of the computers at my school to my laptop. I just put all the files in the right place on my own computer and it worked perfectly

[@loughkb]

I remember using that back in the day. It was very handy from time to time. I was a service tech at a mom and pop computer store, laplink was one of my 'tools' for sure!

[@witeshade]

I used Laplink 3 for years when I was a kid, for backing up and for transferring from an older computer to a newer one. It felt super futuristic

[@Henchman1977]

We used to make our own "LapLink" cable back then... Serial connectors, telephone wire and a pirate copy. Mostly we'd use the cable to play Descent head-to-head.

[@fluffycritter]

Well, this brings up some nostalgic memories for a thing I had no idea I was nostalgic for. Back in the day this made me really excited for the future of home networking.

[@ExtendedJet8]

That Packard Bell monitor/keyboard combo sure brings back memories.

[@safetinspector2]

Used Laplink many times in my early twenties to migrate data from old to new computers during upgrades. Lovely software that I include in the category “elegant solutions to problems we don’t have anymore,” along with parallel port Zip drives and CDRom towers. Thanks for making me feel old, LGR

[@davidinark]

Haha, I think I still have one of those yellow cables in one of my PC Stuff boxes around here. Loved the look back. Used LL a lot in the old days.

[@dionelr]

Woah! I forgot this even existed. Yeah, in college, my brother and I used this to transfer files between us before we updated to token ring. Don’t forget your 30Ohm terminators.

[@theowinters6314]

What I always liked was that LapLink had the ability to copy itself to a machine that didn't have it using a mode and copy command in DOS. It would just stream the binary over the com port and the receive machine would just copy the com port output to disk. It was a really clever use of DOS commands.

[@TheStevenWhiting]

Ah Laplink. Loved it back in about 94 when started college. The lecturer showed us it and how to use it. It turned out to be an engineering course but once I knew how laplink worked, I may have grabbed all the software off the network required for the computer course. All on Windows 3.11. Long story short, I was successful apply for the computer course the 2nd year at college, all because I had the software required :)

[@johndoe1909]

Ah, worked alot with laplink in the late 80ies. Setting up breadboxes with demos, factory terminals and so forth. Oh the memories

[@electrofreak0]

I would absolutely watch a long transfer. No talking, just the sounds of the computers working away. And watching that progress bar slowly work through the files.

[@samsungtelevision695]

Hello new KZbin genre

[@AndyD070568]

When I first started working Laplink 3 was an essential part of your toolkit. I actually won my copy at an Epson seminar when Epson were making PCs and laptops. The double header serial cable did allow DB9 to DB25 connections.

[@TheDrunkenMug]

I still have one of these ! 😀 your unboxing took me back to the 90's where I found such a box in a 5$ crate at a local computer dump market here in the Netherlands. Ah, computer dump markets... Good memories... 😊✌ Thanks for sharing this blerb 👍

[@Tigerskunk]

Back when I got my first PC job, we used Lap Link to transfer the Dos 6.22 and Windows 3.1 files to the systems we built. Used an AT clone as the main PC. Used a boot disk to partition and format the hard drive with boot files. Then ran lap link to copy the preconfigured files for both over to the new system while building the next. Saved lots of time and hassle.

[@pglennon1978]

Wow! I remember copying files from my Compaq Contura Aero 4/25 to my desktop back in the late 90s with this software! Worked amazingly well!

[@Tarukai788]

I remember getting a copy of "LapLink PC Mover" back in 2006 when I bought my first self-bought Windows XP laptop. I planned to use it to move stuff from my old Win2K Pro laptop over, and I think it was somewhat successful, but seeing this here it makes more sense back in that era especially.

[@acmild]

Underwhelming would be too under appreciated it, it’s a kind of lovely nostalgic feeling seeing someone using this “bleeding edge” tech in 2020 while the last time I was using it was in around 98/99. Thanks Clint!

[@DanielKuhne1976]

mid 80's to late 90's - golden age of massive manuals :-)

[@stevec00ps]

Look at that at 6:28 - last resort "through the mouthpiece" - that's just brilliant!

[@jd31068]

No self-respecting computer nerd / IT department dared be without LapLink!! What a revolution for us at the time. 😁 Nobody shoots down my ride and liiiivvvesssss

[@offrails]

My family was a multi-PC household for most of the 90s, and LapLink 3 was a big part of that. Around 1996, we had two PCs in the kids bedroom and we had them linked with a null model cable (for Doom of course), but LapLink and the parallel cable we had (and I still have) were useful for quickly transferring Doom WADs, other game files, and things that my youngest brother "accidentally" deleted.

[@andylaauk]

I used this when I was working for a software developer back in mid nineties. We used it to tranfer files to and from remote customer sites via modem.

[@TheClockUpOnTheWall]

I'm only 39 but feel old as remember making my own laplink cables with parts from Radio Shack and soldering up the wires to the connectors. Both parallel and serial.

[@oswaldjh]

I used this program a lot back in the 90's. I would build PCs in batches of 5 and use my own computer to install the OS and other software. Most of my customers were engineers and required AutoCad or similar software. The time to install these huge programs was cut by over an hour thanks to LapLink.

[@MattPula]

The graphic design on the front of that Accessories booklet is incredible.

[@dragicianryudo595]

Thank you for showing this off. I had no idea such a thing existed and there was a time where I’d have loved this option.

[@sterby1]

I vaguely remember using Laplink for something way back... Then it hit me. It was a summer job in during high school when I built a telex system for transmitting results from a lab to the production site at a factory based on Laplink. It was a hack job but soldering and cable management was good and they used it for 10 years!

[@ctoforhire]

LapLink over Parallel was a life saver back in the day!

[@DownwithEA1]

Man this Packard Bell monitor was the same one my family had after our Commodore 64 PC. I kid you not my parents used that same Packard Bell monitor till about 2 years ago. Ah the memories. So much Red Alert played on that monitor.

[@mbp1646]

I used Laplink regularly back in the 1990s. It was essential whenever you got a new computer and wanted to transfer everything over. The fact that it came with cables was essential in order to avoid RS232 hell (9 pin or 15 pin? male or female? null modem or cross over? parity y/n? number of stop bits? baud rate? etc etc etc. .....)

[@radioactivekitty9174]

5:05 - That Server Technology power thing -- they still exist today! It's now a part of Legrand, and they still do switching power controls and datacenter power solutions.

[@Martin_from_SC]

Wow, I remember using this in the early 90's... thanks for the flashback!

[@tehlaser]

The bootstrap mode of Laplink blew my mind back in the day. I kind of miss the way you used to be able to tell what a computer was "doing" by listening to the noise the drives made.

[@sesboks]

Stuff like this really makes you appreciate the cloud and USB drives

[@MisterKisk]

My buddy who is in a computer science doctorate program loves LapLink V. He always stresses how older software is often better and more functional than the newer stuff, even if it's slower.

[@FatNorthernBigot]

Laplink? My nostalgia bone has been tickled. I remember the revered "null printer cable". I've never owned a null printer.

[@LKRaider]

Null modem, I don’t remember null printer

[@fabio03171]

I've owned the origin lap link 5 for over 20 years and the best part of the cables is because of there color you know what and were they are regardless which bucket hey are in !

[@cvbabc]

I'm old enough to remember when they designed the cord that connected a computer to an electrical outlet so you could turn it on. It revolutionized home computing.

[@theannoyedmrfloyd3998]

The Facilitator Applicator.

[@ian_b]

I remember the service revolution when IBM designated it a FRU.

[@cvbabc]

@@theannoyedmrfloyd3998 Apple made one that looked cool and was easy to use, but only worked with one model of Apple computers and cost three times as much as the other brands

[@eDoc2020]

That cord was designed (or at least standardized) in 1970. It's the IEC 320 standard. Edit: I'm talking about the regular power cable, not anything proprietary from Apple.

[@Thagarr]

A very cool program! I used LapLink as well as a couple of other transfer programs. It is pretty cool to watch it bootstrap it's self over a cable to another PC. It came in pretty handy if your floppy drive controller died. I built my own Null modem serial and parallel cables, it's a good way to learn how to solder. It was a lot quicker to transfer a 20 meg hard drive backup over a parallel cable than to wait for it be written and read from 20 plus disks using a floppy drive!

[@grahammales]

Was a huge user of Laplink back in the 90s. Still have the blue (serial) and yellow (parallel) cables somewhere.

[@Jamal_Tyrone]

That One Claudius, what a funny guy!

[@pazzieanneknexx809]

Thank you for making all of this for us! Older computers are so interesting.

[@aner_bda]

I don't think I've ever seen this software, but it would have blown my mind back in the 90s. Really cool utility.

[@NukeJockey]

It never gets old watching you play Duke 3D Clint

[@johnathin0061892]

If you want to try using a modem, you can get a "cellar gateway" like Xlink that will allow you to turn your cell phone into a physical landline you can plug into. There are even a few remaining dial-up BBSs you can call. Would make for an interesting video I think.

[@ericmdk]

Woah I just wondered about that and posted a comment! Good to know!

[@Koutsie]

Man, the colour scheme on those cables looks sooooooooooo good.

[@TheOtherBill]

I remember LapLink well. I used it at work to update the data files on our notebooks (the common name for laptops because they were 8.5"x11" and fit in your briefcase) for business travel. A newer version came out and I got the company to buy it and took the old one home. This was the start of my home network, 2 PC's permanently connected by LapLink cables. Eventually replaced by 10Base2 then 10BaseT.

[@fragglet]

Fantastic piece of software, and version 5 is wonderfully polished too.

[@thereallantesh]

Back in the '90s I had an office job at a large company. I used LapLink fairly regularly with my coworkers. I'm pretty sure I had an older version. I had both the blue and yellow cables, but my blue serial cable did not have the multiple connectors like yours as far as I can recall.

[@johneygd]

Wooow those yellow & blue parallel cables along the 9 pin cable really looks appealing.

[@ernstoud]

Got those cables in a drawer. They always mingle with other stuff and makes closing the drawer difficult. Memories! The time that hooking up two systems took ages and gave lots of frustration with breakout boxes, CTS, DTR etc...

[@MichaelEhling]

Vaguely recalled Laplink. Then I saw the blue and yellow cables. Yuup. These were always in my computer bag as I traveled 'round the country doing tech things.

[@ejunkempire2459]

I used to use this all the time in high school as well. Also borrowed it from the school quite a few times when I needed to re install windows on my Sony Vaio laptop because I didn’t have the external cd rom for it.

[@chunkychuck]

Ooh, this might be what I need to copy the hard drive off my 1989ish Grid laptop.

[@oldwarrenpointforum]

A life saver back when we sold and repaired video library computers - as most of them had (by request) no floppy drives or CD drives as that made them that little bit more secure (mostly so the video library staff could not load games on etc) So if I was on a call out I simply had to connect up my Laptop to the shops machines and (hopefully) fix it. The software and cables survived in my workshop up until June last year when a friend borrowed them and never left them back. (I don't need them anymore but still.....)

[@Josh.V]

This is truly cutting edge technology.

[@alliejr]

We used this ALL THE TIME when we were "on the road" with our Compaq and Toshiba luggables. We often travelled as a team. No portable network (WiFi was decades away). It was LapLink or "sneaker-net" (upload files to floppy and walking them over to another portable computer to download).

[@Cutest-Bunny998]

Sneaker net still exists, even today. It's hard to beat the bandwidth of a box full of multi TB drives. Google Cloud let's you import via delivered/mailed drives for example.

[@ParoxyDM]

Growing up my best bud and I played Doom deathmatch via a null-modem serial cable all the time. I remember using this app to transfer WAD files between our computers. Fun times. Simpler times.

[@RamiKattan]

First time I used such software as a kid I had to map a printer parallel port cable with wires into the parallel port of the second pc, it was my first time having 2 computers talk to each other

[@u4ia420]

Went to Interop/Webworld Expo in Atlanta in 1998. Won a copy of PC Anywhere.. Coolest piece of software I had seen at the time.

[@mellusk9194]

LapLink was a godsend for me about 20 years ago. I had a Toshiba Portege 300CT with no CD-ROM drive. I would use LapLink to transfer the Windows 98 install from my desktop to it via parallel cable.

[@robinbrowne5419]

Lol. Laplink was our "LAN" at my first job, connecting our bosses pc to the secretary's pc. We had to cut the serial cable and extend it with some cable. It worked ok. My boss could transfer his draft documents to the secretary's pc, so she could fix them up and print them. Ah, the good old days.

[@enilenis]

I used Norton Commander in the 90's and it had null modem utilities built. Was very convenient for file transfers. My friend once broke his windows 95 installation on a computer that had no CD drive, so we transferred 45MB installer off my laptop to his computer with a serial cable. I think it took about an hour.

[@el_yemo]

Nice. I have flashlights about me using this laplink back in the days. Cool!

[@Anaerin]

Way back when, and I was working for a company that would build and repair computers in the 386/486/pentium era, our office used a parallel port network card to connect new machines to our 10-base-2 network to load Windows 3 and our standard test suite.

[@RandomInsano2]

I’ve used a LapLink cable with Windows 95 to copy files a few times and as a null modem to rescue some servers. I’ve NEVER seen the software. That’s kind of amazing. I wish I’d used it more and saved the floppy swapping with WinZip.

[@Cherijo78]

Fun fact: The Parallel version of this technology that was incorporated later into Windows 95 onward under DCC (Direct Cable Connect) as Direct Parallel, was created and licensed by my uncles company, Parallel Technologies Inc (He's now deceased, and they're defunct), to Microsoft. I am very unclear if PTI was a competitor, licensor, or what to LapLink, I'm still trying to figure out the story there, but they were both based in the same basic area of WA near Microsoft. I know that my uncle was deep into creating accessory products well back into the Apple 2 era, so there's something going on here. PTI developed and patented a special parallel UCM cable that allowed higher transfer rates with ECP than a standard LapLink style crossover cable as it has special hardware in one plug, but you could still use these standard crossover cables with their software too. Check out their old sites on Archive.org (web.archive.org/web/20000817050944/www.lpt.com/index.htm)

[@orange-op4ob]

Maybe this is common knowledge, but the company and product still exists. Today it uses ethernet and usb 3.0.

[@bodgemaster7946]

> Today it uses ethernet and usb 3.0. And there is the reason nobody knows about it today. Because one can just take a random USB network card and software for file sharing is baked into Windows, MacOS and many Linux distros.

[@IngwiePhoenix]

It does? :O Is it cross-platform between MacOS and Windows? If so, I must buy this immediately. xD

[@Wazoox]

Doesn't the "Link" in the name, the font, the colors evoke a special version of Zelda to you all? :)

[@IngwiePhoenix]

Ouch... Get your coat mate. :P (I laughted way harder than I should've...)

[@kazzle101]

Back in the day I used to make laplink leads, serial and parallel. I don't ever recall seeing a laplink box though.

[@SeishukuS12]

Don't remember if we ever used Laplink, but back when I was a kid, I made my own serial and parallel cables for DOS's interlink software. Good times, I remember waiting all day for stuff to copy. lol

[@MontieMongoose]

before we had a router, we used to play network games of Warcraft II through a parallel port. It was awesome.

[@MegaManNeo]

My teacher back then used Laplink 2000 to remote connect to another computer in the room which I found to be super exciting. True, it is a newer version than your LL5 but still. To me this was fancy cool computer magic.

[@TheBandy01]

I come home from a 12 hr shift at work, turn on my computer, and see a new video from LGR. A perfect way to begin my well earned, albeit late, weekend.