Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: bloodmoney on August 04, 2004, 06:16:12 PM
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I stumbled upon the following link and found there is a broadband solution for the C64!
Broadband C64 (http://www.jschoenfeld.de/news/news88_e.htm)
I can't believe this can exist and there is nothing for the Amiga 500. I have seen proprietary nic hardware for the Amiga 500 but nothing that gives a TCP/IP stack to connect to a router. Wasn't the Amiga 500 one of the best selling Amiga models? Why is there so little interest for its hardware when so many of my friends had the 500 versus other models? Just food for thought.
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Well, I haven't tried the C64 solutions, so I don't know how they work and how enjoyable ethernet on those is, however A500 would require at least an 030 CPU upgrade in order to qualify for something better than just plain text-access (e.g. surfing the net). For just networking, other solutions are available, I believe, but not through LAN.
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And why not putting an normal regular off the shelf Xsurf ethernet card in the left side of the A500 ??? That way you have AND ethernet, AND a non-bootable IDE controller, AND a clockport !!! :-)
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That would be great, but of course the 500 doesn’t have any Zorro slots that the xsurf requires. I’m sure it wouldn’t be that hard for the manufacture to make a left expansion slot version for the 500, but again this is a classic example were the A500 gets ignored. I don't understand why these companies don’t make a 500 version,it just means extra money/sales for them.
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The side expansion slot of the A500 can be converted to one or more Zorro II slots... There are/were several solutions to this... On aminet you can find instructions to build an interface yourself to get a Zorro II slot.
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@bloodmoney
To be brutally honest, traditonally A500 users didn't upgrade their hardware. PERIOD. 1MB and maybe an extra floppy drive, that's it. There have been some hardware expansions made for the A500 in the past but they sold terribly.
Your best bet would be to find a Bogoda Bay, or maybe even a Slingshot.
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Used to see quite a few A530s back in the day ... one of those with a prometheus and riser with PCI 10/100 ethernet, graphics card and 3.1 roms would do nicely :-D
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Interesting Holly.
I have an a530 turbo 40mhz. I see a 99-pin expansion connector that looks like a ribbon cable could hook up to it but no Zorro like slots for any card. If there was a way to connect this up, space wouldn’t be a problem, I would just build a case around whatever mess I end up with.
As far as slingshot or bodega bay goes, they are imposable to find. Note there was something once called a HI-Q tower once. I guess I will have to build a sling shot like device as mentioned earlier. It would just be nice if there were already a complete solution. As far as a market for this I feel many people like me bought there A500 10 or more years ago when they were young and poor, as we grow older and more financialy successful, we now have funds for hardware we couldn't buy in the past. I know this would be a niche for the enthusiasts market, but I bet there are more people than me that would be willing to pay money for "new" devices to expand the 500. I got my old cranky Mac se 30 hooked up to broadband and surfing the Internet with early browsers. There is no reason I see that this cant be done for the 500, a much more capable machine. So come on developers, tap into this undiscovered resource. If the C64 can do it than the might Amiga 500 can do it. YOU CAN DO IT. lol.
:-D
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Hey Bloodmoney,
Have a look at this!
http://www.v4fun.net/Images/A500zorro.jpg
Get that soldering iron out, :hammer:
Wol.
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Cool, good info Wol. Im having a little trouble reading the grey boxs on the left on the jpg. Is that from Amiga user international? Is that the whole artiicle?
Yea looks like I will be soldering. Thanks for the article, and thanks to all for the great info and ideas here.
:-)
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I made one of them as a class project back in the day! Its real easy and worked great.
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I second the Bodega Bay idea. I just spent a month putting the Bay's busboard in a custom tower with a Rev. 5 A500 a la Tom Week's T.O.P. project. I also had a Denise Extender Board lying around so I added a video slot for a Microway flickerfixer. So, after much work I have an 'A500T' with four ZII slots, one ECS video slot, 1MB chip/8MB fast ram but still the lowly/mighty? 7MHz 68000. Works great for adding an A2091 SCSI card, memory, even ethernet but still no processor slot so you'd need to find a CSA MegaMidget or other 68000 slot accelerator to speed it up or go mad waiting for windows to open, etc. Also, a 68020 is minimum for 3.5/3.9. Be careful though, not all A500 accelerators that go in the 68000 slot will be compatible with the Bodega Bay. I use this DIY project with a Multiface III card and dial-up (I don't mind waiting) and turn off image loading for web stuff and plan to add a MegaChip some time. My advice for A500 broadband: buy an old A2000 or better yet an A3000 instead and add one of Jen's excellent X-Surf cards. I love the A500 but it's a bear to find stuff for it, imho.
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My advice for A500 broadband: buy an old A2000 or better yet an A3000 instead
I hate to say, but I'd have to agree. Funny though, back in the mid to late 90's I built up a beefy Amiga 500 and put it on the net. i was looking for more ways to beef it up, and many Amigans back then would tell me to simply buy an A3000 or A4000. Unfortunately back then (~10 years ago) the cost of doing so was staggering. Nowadays you can pick up an A3000 on eBay for about $100, less than the price of an A530 usually.
Well let me back up. Do what you'd like. If you wish to beef up the A500 and it's for the heck of it, go for it. I've been meaning to do this with an A1000 forever, I'll finally given up (lack of time). However if your ultimate goal is a modernish system without breaking the bank, A3000 would be the better bet.
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@redrumloaa
My goal is to get my amiga 500 hundred on a broadband/network connection simply because I want to, and I like the challenge. The mac thing I mentioned earlier was a little bit of a challenge but I did it. I’m the kind of guy who would try to connect a Univac to broadband if I thought it was possible. I just like the coolness and geekdom involved.
:insane:
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Well maybe an other approach that is a little difficult to set up (I don't know how to do it excactly too)
Try to get an A560 Arcnetadapter für the A500, and an A2060 Arcnetcard for a Zorroamiga. Put in that Zorroamiga an Ethernetboard too. Using MiamiDX it should be possible to rout the broadbandconnection of the Zorroamiga to the A500 via the arcnetconnection.
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I agree with redrumloa. Since the A500 motherboard was designed from the A2000, why mess with it if you can have the real thing with an A2000? But challenges I also understand. The trouble with adding a Zorro bus to the A500 expansion slot is that I believe it must be buffered, etc. to emulate a real A2000 bus. That's more than a DIY project, but maybe I'm wrong. I forgot to suggest and have never actually found one myself, but I believe Micronik made a special expansion board for the A500 which added Zorro and processor expansion slots to the A500 in a nice tower package. This used to be sold here in the States by a company called CeV Design in Massachusetts (they used to advertise in Amazing Computing, wow! now that's dating me!). Alas, like so much neat Amiga stuff for the A500, it remains a mythical creature to me. If interested in seeing this real gem, there is a picture of one on the amiga hardware site (www.amiga-hardware.com).
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bloodmoney wrote:
@redrumloaa
My goal is to get my amiga 500 hundred on a broadband/network connection simply because I want to, and I like the challenge.
No problem in that. Here's my recomendation then. Either buy or build a SlingShot type zorro slot and add a A2065 or Xsurf ethernet card. Next you will need a TCP/IP stack. Here's the real sticky part. IIRC there is a 68000 version of Miami Shareware, use that. It will time out after 30 minutes and there is no way to register any longer. Maybe you can find a second hand set of disks, IIRC there was a retail version.
Another possibility, as long as you can live with AppleTalk instead of TCP/IP is a hardware called DoubleTalk. There was an Amiga 500 version that hung off the side like an A530 does. You have to use this with other AppleTalk hardware like DoubleTalk (A2000 version), or a real Mac that uses AppleTalk. Granted you may be limited on the type of network it is. It may be limited to file sharing, you'd have to find someone more knowledgible than me when it comes to networking:-)
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Ethernet for the A500: Hydra AmigaNet 500 (http://www.amiga-hardware.com/hydra500_4_big.jpg)
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Is it a Zorro card with a Side expansion slot -> Zorro converter? Or whats that green pcb by the connector?
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Orjan wrote:
Is it a Zorro card with a Side expansion slot -> Zorro converter? Or whats that green pcb by the connector?
Sure looks that way.
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Yep... Its confusingly similar to: http://www.amiga-hardware.com/hydra_zorro_v11.jpg
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Very interesting red. I didn't know there was an Amiga version of DoubleTalk. I do have several models of Macs so this could work to some extent. Although my main goal is to surf the net/email/ possiable ftp server via broadband.
First I believe that I will have to upgrade my roms from 1.3 to something higher as Miami requires this if I'm not mistaken. There have been some really fascinating ideas generated from this discussion, again thank you to everyone for all the ideas.
:-)
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Orjan wrote:
Is it a Zorro card with a Side expansion slot -> Zorro converter? Or whats that green pcb by the connector?
It's the standard zorro AmigaNet card there, but the little green pcb is not a Zorro slot adapter. There's an extra connector/header on these AmigaNet cards just above their Zorro edge connector where the adapter attaches to. Here's the closeup of the small pcb: amiga.resource.cx/photos/photo.pl?id=amiganet500 (http://amiga.resource.cx/photos/photo.pl?id=amiganet500). Anyway the card should work in a Zorro converter too.
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BTW what I said before was joking, I think the connector on the side of an A530 is for SCSI, but I would think it's possible to fudge a zorro in-between the A500 & A530.