Dialup Networking (or something)

Ok I’m working from some half-compiled information here so bear with me:

My Aunt wants to work from home. She runs a small deli/bar in Cleveland and she does all of the orders and the books herself. The orders are done on paper but at the end of the day she puts them in her computer. Apparently the program she uses for this is FoxPro-based (most likely from 1986 or some crap).

She has it in her head that she can use my cousin’s computer at home to dial up to her computer at work and it will answer and show her her desktop. I say bullshit.

Here’s some specs (that I know of…)
Home computer is WinME with AT&T Dialup
Work computer is either 98 or ME with an AOL guest account

My solution was to get XP or 2k on both of these machines, get a business cable internet account with a static IP. Use terminal serivces, all done.

I also considered setting up an FTP server of some kind but not sure how to go about it in the right way. I have no clue how FoxPro works.

A thumb drive or a floppy isn’t the answer, either, because the point of this exercise is to avoid having to GO to work (my aunt has trouble going outside in this freezing weather)

They don’t want to hear it. Too mcuh $$ (wtf??)

Basically I’m looking for some answers to give them to back up my assertion that WHAT THEY WANT WON’T WORK without some $$ put into it. They just want to dialup between 2 machines. Even if it did work, wouldn’t it be hella slow? Can you even do such things on non-NT-based machines? Don’t you at least need a static IP?

When I was younger I used QModem to dial BBSes but that’s all for my experience with dialup. I can’t test anything using my machine, as it’s quite dependent on broadband. I don’t even have a modem.

Does anyone have any suggestions, or any good answers for me? My cousin is bugging me to tell him how to make his computer “answer the phone.” I said I don’t know. I told him it can’t, and even if it did, then what?

Please help before I disown my family.

What they want to do is indeed possible. Research “windows dial-up server”. It’s part of the standard windows 98 se package.

Setting up the server
Setting up the client

Once you have the connection, if they insist on seeing the desktop, you’ll need to use something like PC Anywhere or Remote Desktop. I know that when I put the Windows XP disc into a win98 or me computer, it gives me the option of adding Remote Desktop capabilities, but I’m not sure if it only upgrades for client access or not.

Okay, according this this, you can only install the client portion of Remote Desktop on a non XP machine. So you would need to install XP on the work PC to use it.

Knowing that, I highly recommend PC Anywhere. Used in conjunction with Dial-up Server, your family should be happy. You can get last year’s version for only $8.99.

I’ll uh… third the motion for PCAnywhere. I once helped an aunt install it on a slow laptop with a 9600 baud modem. I was convinced it was going to be unuseable, but it wasn’t that bad.

Hmm, if both phones are in cleveland, then neither need an internet connection, its simple to set up the windows dialer , its generic version of the BBS software, and have the phone set to auto ansewer.

I do think that she will need a copy of foxpro loaded on both machines ,so the simple thing would be just to do a transfer of what ever the data file is called , from one machine to the other.

It would be the simplest solution I can think of.

Declan

PC Anywhere is a great program.

I had to go to nights about a year ago to work production when orders exploded. I needed a way to browse inventory levels, and manage my other daytime duties from home. It worked great, even on dial up.

Good Luck…

If you don’t have an OS that supports Remote Desktop, or if you just plain don’t like it, you can use VNC - a good example of this is TightVNC, which has the added advantage that the server program also contains an HTTP server, so you can use a java-enabled browser to view the desktop of the remote PC from anywhere on the internet. (Although the remote machine must already be connected to the net and I’m not sure how you can make this work with dynamic IP addresses).