Wireless Ethernet - Amiga 500?

[neofree]

I just saw a wireless ethernet adaptor for Amiga 1200 on eBay.  Makes me wonder... Does such a thing exist for Amiga 500?

[Effy]

Not directly, but you can get a clockport adapter from Jens and there you just might be able to use a clockport based ethernet controller .. but a turboboard might be needed ...

[neofree]

Whats clockport?

[jdiffend]

The wireless card on ebay was an 802.11b card with drivers.  Since the 802.11b card is not a CardBuss card it is hardware compatible with the Amiga 1200/600 but you'd need a decent CPU to keep up with the 802.11b protocol and encryption.

I know there was someone working on drivers for such a card.  It would involve modifying the drivers for PCMCIA networking cards but it wouldn't be impossible.

BTW, since 802.11G requires the bandwidth of CardBuss you won't see it on an Amiga 1200.  I don't even know if the Amiga could handle that much bandwidth even if the card type weren't an issue.

[neofree]

So if I got another Amiga 1200.. possibly without hard drive or accell board, could i boot from floppy or network with one of these and then use a share on the network as a hard drive?

[TjLaZer]

No, you will need a HD and Fast RAM, as you need a TCP/IP stack and other system files to get on a network.

[neofree]

ok so with that though...?

[TjLaZer]

In my experience you will need a 020 minimum, 2MB Chip and 2MB + Fast RAM.  OS 2+, a HD (10MB +) and TCP/IP software (Miami, AmiTCP, Genesis, Termite TCP, etc), and a network card (Any 16bit PCMCIA for A1200/600)  I do not know of any Ethernet cards for the A500.  If you got a Slingshot adaptor for the A500 you could use a ZII Ethernet card.

I actually got a A600 on the LAN but was very tight with it's 2MB RAM.  But I was able to use FTP.  Forget about using a browser on 2MB.

Good luck