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[Sir Knight]

. . . I'm still stuck on the idea of extracting a healing elixir and putting it on the clipboard.  Also, good to know that "expel to" is this thing's version of "unzip," that is, do not do this.  Instead, squint eyes to narrow slits to protect from visions of horror and select "Auctoritas."

Can this pitchfork cursor that somehow survived shift-delete be dragged into Windows/Cursors?  Does it show a filename?  Better see if there are hints there before using it.

By the way: I do believe we have plenty of ways to move floppy disks around, given our recent shenanigans, but I'm neutral on the idea of adding files to a sentient mystical tome that speaks in our brain.  Would the sterile white background itch?

While I'm thinking:

Spoiler: The original ticket (click to show/hide)

I notice that it was an "Emergency."  Was the failure of the internet connection merely a side effect, or did this itself cause the present problems?  Or was the user getting pulled out of reality too, and know a way to use a restored connection in order to escape?  Who posted this darn ticket?

[wierd]

Remember: While Norman is currently a useful associate, it is not his nature to be this way.  His true nature is to corrupt and twist the minds of his 'owners', into doing the bidding of the dark elder gods.

-1 to appending the documentation of the stone to Norman for now, or at least not the whole documentation.

PDFs can contain document links.

Create a specialized folder with very restricted access (as in, read only to anyone but your admin account) and place the documentation pdf there. Then, insert a link to that PDF into Norman. This gives us the ability to break Norman's connection with that knowledge effortlessly should he become troublesome.

Also, examine the joist angles/linear dimensions of the walls, floor and ceiling of the room.... For reasons.

[Gwolfski]

We have that usb floppy drive that was plugged into that cheap smartphone.

Also, check the wiring at the back of the computer. Look for weird dongles or cables.

[wierd]

1990s era systems came with serial and parallel ports.  They did not have USB, and typically did not have ethernet ports.

If our laptop had such ports (which is very, VERY doubtful), and if suitable cables existed in the office (Again, very very doubtful, as they would have been trashbinned in the 2000s) we could use something like Laplink or Fastlynx.

Technically, we could fashion a "null modem cable"  out of 4 insulated wires, but we would again need to have a real serial port on our laptop.

[Gwolfski]

IF we knew a suitably low-level language, and the ability to code and program, in theory it could be possible to code a program to output to only two pins in a serial connection, which when wired to a usb plug, could achieve performance similar to USB 1.0 .(usb uses two data lines, and it is possible (can't find source rn) to 'hack' serial to usb)

edit: voltage might be a problem. usb is 5v, serial is 12v

[wierd]

The USB protocol is handled by both hardware and software in the stack. There is no realistic way to get "raw" access to the wires of USB.

It would be easier to pervert the microphone and headphone jacks of the laptop.

(This is basically how cassette tape drives worked. A cassette recorded the raw square pulse signals from a serialized data stream, often with in-line data correction structures. It then played them back into a serial port style device, which the computer listened on.  In this case, we create an audio file with PCM samples that correspond to square wave patterns that encode the bit sequence we want to send, along with inline error correction codes. The computer on the other end receives this over its serial port, then decodes the message into the appropriate files.)

See for instance, this project.
https://www.swharden.com/wp/2011-07-09-sound-card-microcontrollerpc-communication/

Its focus is to abuse soundcard hardware to communicate with serial-only microcontrollers.  Instead of a micrcontroller, we would be talking with this ancient horror from when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

[RAM]

Okay, that sounds good, we just convert the document of unfathomable horror into an unfathomable binary language and then have the computer read that out aloud for the whole world to hear. Cannot possibly go wrong! Could we try wiring the audio output of the one into the audio input of the other? Assuming it even has audio output, some just had P.C. speaker...

[wierd]

silly goose.

A serial port uses a common ground, and RX, TX, and some flow control bits on CTS/RTS pins.

You hook the headphone's left channel output to the RX pin, the stereo ground to the common ground, the microphone's left channel to the TX pin, the microphone's ground to the common ground, then use the right channel on the headphone and microphone to sent the flow control bits.

You dont actually get to hear the eldritch shriek of the data.  It's all transacted over the wires.

You need software to create a virtual serial port that hooks the soundcard in this way, and then presents it to the system as a standard serial port.  the combination of your software and the soundcard then implements the UART specification, and all is right with the world-- as long as your software is fast enough anyway.

You could even then run fastlynx in dosbox, and pass your virtual serial port to dosbox to present to dos programs as "Com1", and you could then go to town with it.

[Gwolfski]

silly goose.

A serial port uses a common ground, and RX, TX, and some flow control bits on CTS/RTS pins.

You hook the headphone's left channel output to the RX pin, the stereo ground to the common ground, the microphone's left channel to the TX pin, the microphone's ground to the common ground, then use the right channel on the headphone and microphone to sent the flow control bits.

You dont actually get to hear the eldritch shriek of the data.  It's all transacted over the wires.

You need software to create a virtual serial port that hooks the soundcard in this way, and then presents it to the system as a standard serial port.  the combination of your software and the soundcard then implements the UART specification, and all is right with the world-- as long as your software is fast enough anyway.

You could even then run fastlynx in dosbox, and pass your virtual serial port to dosbox to present to dos programs as "Com1", and you could then go to town with it.

+1

[Sir Knight]

( . . . All of which sounds awesome, but, um, I kinda lost the purpose of this arcane technowizardry in handling the eldritch technowizardry.)

[Gwolfski]

( . . . All of which sounds awesome, but, um, I kinda lost the purpose of this arcane technowizardry in handling the eldritch technowizardry.)

Trust the IT technician, for thou are lost withoutst him, and praise the glory of the IT technician, for they knowst how to google thou problems and fix them.

-Other search engines are  available

[wierd]

( . . . All of which sounds awesome, but, um, I kinda lost the purpose of this arcane technowizardry in handling the eldritch technowizardry.)

We need a way to transmit a very large file from the arcane computer of horror (namely, the help file PDF of the administrator's stone) to our development laptop, which contains Norman.

The current means at our disposal (USB floppy drive + diskette) is limited to AT MOST 1.72mb file size. The PDF is substantially larger than that, at 800 PAGES of dense text.

Hence, the technowizardry.   We can transmit or receive a file of any size, as long as we are patient.

[Gwolfski]

How old is our laptop? If it's old enough, it'll have a pata hard drive, which would fit with the older pc pata architecture. Though it would rebooting the machines, which might not be good,

[Maximum Spin]

You guys know that files are just streams of bytes, right? To get around the space limitation we should just split the file and reassemble it on the laptop.

[Gwolfski]

I think the audio cable would be the best, when/if we get it working.