I have some questions to ask about Hydra System AmigaNet 500: http://amiga.resource.cx/photos/amiganet500,2. Is this a normal Ethernet standard card like you see in normal nowadays PC? Can I just hook it directly to my modem and I immediately get access to the internet?
It doesn't have a modern RJ-45 connector, so you need either very old hub which has BNC connector or the easier way an AUI to RJ45 transceiver adapter.
Here is a picture what kind of transceiver I have in my A2000 with Hydra's Amiganet 1.1 ZorroII card.
Of course you also need TCP/IP stack software installed, and more modern and easier options may be out of the question unless you have expanded your A500 with newer kickstart and maybe even CPU. But some old AmiTCP/IP versions probably should work with a less expanded system, but may be hard to set up.
I am not so sure I understand the speed of it. Can I download 1 MB/sec file? How about 512 KB/sec file? Can I do that? There is works on a new internal accelerator for the Amiga 500 that suppose to give the Amiga 500 a major boost in CPU speed which outshines all the normal accelerators for the A500 (which when I look at them is truly horrible). Would I get a good internet performance or would I drop to 1 byte/sec even with this card? I understand zorro 2 is a horrible expansion port because it can only do 3.5 Mb/sec. However, this is great speed for internet for the A500 and I will be really happy if I get half or even 1 Mb/sec speed.
1MB/s (about the theoretical max) will be out of the question, but the speed highly depends the CPU you have, as you have suspected.
I've got max 600kB/s with my Amiganet card in ZorroII bus on A1200 with overclocked 060/60MHz accelerator. Either Amiganet itself or ZorroII has been the limitation, because with Mediator setup and 10/100 PCI card I've now got max 1400kB/s.
I've put the Amiganet card to A2000/010, but haven't used it that much. I'm not completely sure now, but I'd remember that I got around 50kB/s speeds with it.
For comparison, my A1200/030@50MHz with PCMCIA network card gives around 400kB/s speeds, so it seems to be quite directly comparable to the CPU speed.
