Hi ALL
Like many of you I grew up with several Amigas among other machines and they have left the greatest impression on my memories and my love of computers and technology. I sort of cut my teeth in CLI's on on A2000HD before getting a string of PC clones (the first was a genuine XT) and still consuming gadgetry to this day. Now I have a house full of computers (and fellow bachelors, haha), and a spare room full of old miscellaneous pc components. My hobby is going in there for a few hours with a screwdriver and emerging with a new working machine to do probably nothing useful with. My latest effort materialized a dual P3 866 box with fedora linux on it which has become our gateway (replaced a slow netgear router dsl box, it worked but crappy response times).
ANYHOW, before the PC's came 2 or 3 Amigas. I first came into contact with an Amiga 1000 and was enchanted by the games, the graphics, the sounds and the feel. We eventually sold that and not long later we got an Amiga 2000HD. This was my real first exposure to a GUI and being able to get in and mess around with things.
Well, now I have a healthy network running, it suddenly dawned on me one day to dig out that old A2000 (which I have done) and try to network it. Now, I know next to nothing about networking Amigas and there little material around to get an initial feel of what I need to know or look out for. My first problem, is the 2000 able to take any old ISA NIC? If not, what are the options? Am i going to have to invest in specialist Amiga hardware? I put in a DLINK 10Mbit card which seemed to work because when I plugged it into the switch, it showed that there was a link. This doesnt necessarily mean its going to work though. If I had the right hardware whats the next step? Particular with an old 2000 and WB2.0 I think, how do I detect and install new hardware (preferrably from the shell, I want to know how to monitor and control devices from there). The presence of the network card doesnt come up automatically and nor do I assume that it will. Would it be included into the system if I did a complete WB re-install? Do I need a newer OS? Is it futile to network this machine at all?
From what I have read you need one of the later Amigas to be able to do web browsing and view videos and such. Beyond the challenge of networking the machine I didn't realise that the 2000 wouldn't be good for much. If it is though let me know, it is a challenge I am interested in.
Thanks for any help and its good to know the spirit of Amiga is still alive and buzzing.
