Broadband solution for the amiga 500

[redrumloa]

@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.

[redrumloa]

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.

[redrumloa]

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:-)