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

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

Ah, blood sacrifice has been made. Very standard.

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.

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!

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!

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

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

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💻💻💻💻

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!!

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

"Look behind you - a four headed cable!"

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.

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

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

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

Ohhh, now THAT'S a monitor I haven't seen in a long time. My parents had one just like it when I was a kid.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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.

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 👍

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.

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

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

Love the videos as always! Thank you for doin them!!

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

This brings back memories. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

You brought me back to my computer infancy. Thanks!!

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

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

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

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.

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!

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.

It never gets old watching you play Duke 3D Clint

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 :)

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.

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

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.

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.

Thanks for the video! A great way to start my day.

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

That One Claudius, what a funny guy!

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!

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

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

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.

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.

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

This is truly cutting edge technology.

Wauw, now that is a program I've almost forgotten. It's been a long time since I've seen it, thank you for the parallel ride

I'm watching this late, tired, and Clint's voice is making me fall asleep. :))

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.

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.

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.

I forgot you did this video but it is turning out quite usefull for me now. Thanks.

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.

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

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

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

Wow you lost blood for this blerb... respect!

Used to use this many years ago, brilliant piece of software.

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

I Just love the new banner of the channel

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

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.

"I stuck Doom on the school computers." You were doing the lord's work for your fellow classmates.

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.

Really cool! I remember seeing Laplink option in some software but never seen it in action.

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.

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.

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.

Clint, you're the best.

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.

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!

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.

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 !

Happy memories of LapLink.

My frst 486 PC was a Packard Bell Legend 10CD 486 SX-2 50Mhz.. Man that brings back the memories.

O god i love substantial reference material

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. .....)

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

I always wanted a programme like this in the 90s but never knew what it was called... also looking forward to that Packard Bell video, I had that exact monitor for my second computer.

Got several Versions of LL SW & Hardware! Love the Dos Version,even for use without cables,as file manager!

The power of L. Making sharp cardboard fun to watch!

It has been so long since I've seen one of those. They use to be great! I used them a bunch.