Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: sim085 on December 09, 2008, 08:16:10 PM
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Hi,
While browsing about Amiga stuff I came across the A560. The A560 is a network card which connects to the side expansion slot of the A500 and A1000. Now why would someone have bought an A560 back in those days?
Regards,
Sim085
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My mistake, wrong product.
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I have never seen an A560 :-?
Maybe for A1000's, office network or something like that.
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sim085 wrote:
Hi,
While browsing about Amiga stuff I came across the A560. The A560 is a network card which connects to the side expansion slot of the A500 and A1000. Now why would someone have bought an A560 back in those days?
Regards,
Sim085
To transfer data between other computers? I guess anything you would do on a network really.
The Amiga isn't that old Geez ;-)
Networks were around way before the A1000 or the C64.
Even Ethernet was developed in the early 70s I believe.
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arcnet was around in the 70's....
ethernet standards were not ratified until the 1980's...
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Yes, but was there really any software which made use of this technology? Also the A560 connected to the side of the A500 which meant that a hard disk could not be connected; in other words the software to use this device would have had to be loaded from disks ... or!?
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Maybe the answer is, as with all things Amiga, "because we can".
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My A500s hard drive had a pass through so that you could plug in other devices such as the A560. I personally had a commodore cd rom drive plugged into the side of my 500s hard drive which I used mostly for cdtv titles.
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@JC
What type (brand) of hard drive and model was it that had the pass-through? just curious... never seen one...
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A560 was an arcnet card, not ethernet. The usage was the typical things, sharing filesystems, printers etc. The software was early versions of Envoy I guess, or the TCP/IP-stack AS225. There was also the A2060 card for zorro machines.
A2065 was the ethernet equivalent, and is still quite commonly in use. I've never heard of an A565, sadly - it would be quite high on my wish list :-)
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sim085 wrote:
Yes, but was there really any software which made use of this technology? Also the A560 connected to the side of the A500 which meant that a hard disk could not be connected; in other words the software to use this device would have had to be loaded from disks ... or!?
Commodore's TCP/IP stack had support for it, and the A560 had an auto-boot ROM so you could boot off of the network.
Also keep in mind that hard disks weren't exactly cheap back in the day.
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Also keep in mind that hard disks weren't exactly cheap back in the day.
Back then ("in the day", as it were), people that really needed loads of storage would've used those big reel-to-reel tapes because people that needed that kind of storage would've been working in a place with the kind of giant machines that used them.
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It was a supra drive I believe, it had extra ram and a switch that would allow you to turn just the hd off. If I remember correctly the GVP hd's had pass throughs as well.
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... but does anyone have screen shots (or can explain) what one would have seen when starting his A500 with such a device connected?
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If no server to boot the machine remotely, pretty much identical to the standard machine. :roll:
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and with a server to boot the machine remotely? You would get a workbench installed on that machine? Something like a Terminal? Did workbench already support networking back then!?
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neither the GVP HD8, or 530 have pass throughs :-( unless you count the internal 100 pin header...
i wonder... if you get some old PC arcnet card, could winUAE be setup as a boot server for an A560 equiped machine? but then would a machine with ISA slots be fast enough to run winUAE?... argh! :crazy:
i think the amiga missed a trick with missing out onboard networking. i know its not ethernet, but its how the ol' BBC and Archy got into schools so easy. :-)
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If I remember correctly the GVP hd's had pass throughs as well
Well, unfortunately, they didn't! I have both the HC8+ and the Impact A500 - neither of them has a pass-through connector. There are very few sidecar expansions for the A500 with passthrough connectors, and HDD controllers rarely belong to that few expansions...
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Sorry to bring this up again, but does anyone know what a user would have seen when booting from a server? Did anyone ever try this?
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Supradrive 500XP has a passthrough.
...speaking of which, anyone interesting in purchasing one, send me a PM.
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sim085 wrote:
Sorry to bring this up again, but does anyone know what a user would have seen when booting from a server? Did anyone ever try this?
It would look just like booting from a floppy or hard disk, I guess. Only difference would be that the boot device would be a network share instead of floppy/hard disk.
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kolla wrote:
sim085 wrote:
Sorry to bring this up again, but does anyone know what a user would have seen when booting from a server? Did anyone ever try this?
It would look just like booting from a floppy or hard disk, I guess. Only difference would be that the boot device would be a network share instead of floppy/hard disk.
And it would be slow as {bleep}
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Actually, it wasn't all together that bad! Coming from a floppy based system and having fiddled only with Parnet and that sort of network the ARCnet felt quite snappy!
Obviously not as fast as Ethernet, but still not bad transfering files. I even used them with my BBS to park download files on a seperate machine. A little like a very early version of a NAS :)
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Yeah.. Its too bad they never made an A565...
I believe the hyrda "sidecar" for the A500 was arcnet as well..
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Metalguy66 wrote:
Yeah.. Its too bad they never made an A565...
I believe the hyrda "sidecar" for the A500 was arcnet as well..
Nope. I've got one, it's Ethernet alright.
Inside it is basically a Zorro 2 Hydra card.
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You are right about that.. What the hell was I thinking..
Kewl looking case on that Hydranet unit too.. GVP also resold it with their name-badge.. It's too bad that niether the Hydranet 500 or any of GVP's HDD sidecars had zorro passthrough...