Falcon F-16 v2.0 in multiplayer....Mac Plus <-> 486 PC!

[Mu0n]

Last year, I bought the boxed game of Falcon F-16.

In the supplemental documentation added with v2.0, we can see this paragraph:

Goal:
serial link multiplayer game between a vintage Mac and vintage PC using a null-modem link between the two!

Mac side: Falcon F-16 v2.0 (the update that brought multiplayer for this port) running on a Mac Plus
PC side: Falcon (I think you can get away with the original which allows mp out of the box) running on a MSDOS6.22 486 IBM that has a DB9 male serial port.

I bought a cable on ebay blindly, it was cheap, and the wiring doesn't look promising. this is the diagram of how the pins are linked together on both ends of the cable

I think a potential solution is:

cable 1: Mac DIN8 male to DB25 male regular printer cable
cable 2: PC DB9 female to DB25 female null modem cable <- not easy to find

or perhaps
cable 1: Mac DIN8 male to DB25 male regular printer cable
cable 2: PC DB9 female to DB9 male null modem cable
dongle 1: DB9 female to DB25 femal

I definitely need help from people more knowledgeable about these null-modem solution, bonus points if you've done cross platform connections with RS422 and RS232!

 

[Mu0n]

I got answers from the other place, here's a collection of notes on the topic (thanks @joevt)


https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/serial-app-to-old-world-of.2429025/post-33239745


I think I'll do a 2-prong approach. Irreversibly modify the badly wired cable I have according to these notes, but also figure out a solution that can be bought in the market now.

So I bought these and they are on the way:

 

[patters]

This will be interesting to see. It's curious that these inter system link-up modes were developed, especially given the additional testing costs. Coincidentally, I saw it mentioned recently (in a YouTube video I think) that Stunt Car Racer was able to link between Amiga and Atari ST, something I never realised at the time (pirated disk *cough cough*).

 

[Nycturne]

When the communication is simple serial, the testing costs probably aren't all that high. So long as you decided both platforms would use the same packet format, and the same RS-232 conventions, it wouldn't be hard to test it. And in some ways, testing the Mac implementation against the DOS one could have been the way to test that the multiplayer code was implemented/ported correctly to the Mac. 80s/90s networking protocols on the other hand...

Probably also helps when the same developer writes both versions, meaning they have both versions and the hardware on-hand.