Help! PCMCIA card on A1200?

[dweomer]

Hi,

I've just picked up an A1200 and am upgrading piecemeal-- It's a replacement for my A2000HD which got flooded. It was a great MIDI machine when I had it at top form, but some of the chips went bad, so it became one of the projects I was "getting around to." Now it's down the river. Sigh.

These days I'm a cable modem junkie, but I never hooked the 2000 up to ethernet when I had it, so I'm a bit sketchy on the technical how-to.  I'm hoping that I can use a PCMCIA card that I already have to bring high bandwidth to the Amy.

I own 2 types: a Farallon Ethermac card and an older Megahertz EM1144T (combo 14.4 modem and 10baseT).  I checked the Ethermac in my old Powerbook, and it still functions, and the Megahertz was OK the last time I used it (eons ago on an old 386 laptop).

Will one of these cards work with the A1200? What specific files do I need to have, and where should I put them?

My apologies if I sound like a newbie, but I've been out of the Amiga scene for a while, so treat me like I'm ignorant. I'm not afraid to modify startup sequences or anything, though. It's good to have a real computer again.

Thanks in advance for any help!!

[gnarly]

I'm not sure if either will work, but its worth a try :-)

You will need:

- cnet.device from aminet (pcmcia ethernet driver)
- a tcp/ip stack, such as genesis or miami
- as with anything amiga related, a barrowload of patience ;-)

Good luck!

[odin]

Search aminet for cnet device, that'll have a compatibility listing with it.

AFAIK any 'NE2000' compatible network card has a big chance of working with cnet.device. Also only 16 bit PCMCIA cards will work.

BTW, welcome as a poster on a.org :-D.

[lorddef]

I had an EM1144T, unfortunately it won't work in the a1200

I got a cheep 3com card off of ebay and it works a treat

[Jiffy]

Just a reminder: don't forget the A1200's PCMCIA-slot has a reseterror... Nothing big if you know how to handle a soldering iron (I don't) to solve it, but it can be annoying. It is always temporarily solve by re-inserting your networkcard when the A1200 is switched on.

BTW: my networkcard came with an adapter for one of the A1200's chips which solved the reseterror. Open up your A1200, look for the chip, click the adapter in place and that's it.

[amiga_boy]

Power Computing can supply a suitable PCMCIA ethernet card and a solution for the reset problem. If I remember correctly they supplied a network setup disk that would get your miggy onto a network in less than 10 mouse clicks.

[WarPiper]

the name and model of that card would help alot

[Olle]

Just a reminder: don't forget the A1200's PCMCIA-slot has a reseterror... Nothing big if you know how to handle a soldering iron (I don't) to solve it, but it can be annoying. It is always temporarily solve by re-inserting your networkcard when the A1200 is switched on.

That's not necessary any more.   :-D

search for CardReset on Aminet, and it will replace the "old" hardware reset-bugfix work.

[Jaruzel]

Seconded.

Whereas I AM good with a soldering iron, CardReset works so well, that there really is no need to patch the {Gayle?} chip.

-Jar.

[pVC]

There's a compatibility list in cnet archive and in addition to that there's some 3com driver in aminet. CardReset.lha fixes the reset bug in pcmcia on a1200 with software patch, so no hw modification is needed. And if your system feels slower with pcmcia-card, then take CardPatch.lha from aminet too.

[ncafferkey]

Your Farallon card should work with hard/drivr/3c589.lha from Aminet. If it doesn't, let me know (my address is in that archive).

The Megahertz card won't work as it's neither NE2000 nor 3Com compatible. The slow modem might work though :-)

Regards,
Neil Cafferkey

[AmiDog]

[Jaruzel]

Yup should do, I can confirm that the 410 works. :-)

-Jar.

[patrik]

@AmiDog:

I tried the FA411 with the latest cnet.device a couple of weeks ago and it didnt work. The FA411 uses an Asix chip - AX88790 which has NE2000-alike registers, but there seems to be some quirks with the NE2000-compatiblity as it doesnt work with cnet.device.


/Patrik

[dweomer]

I'm going to have to get one of the more compatible 3Com Etherlink III cards, I think. I've tinkered around with the settings with the Farallon plugged in and the device won't open under Miami. None of the potential strange crash/reset problems have manifested yet.

I'm pretty sure I'm configuring it right, since I've done a fair amount of this sort of thing on other platforms, and I've got my external modem dialing up Access-4-Free internet (which I highly recommend for dial-up in many US localities) without problems.

I've got a new problem now, but I should probably put it in another thread, to avoid confusion and duplicate messages. :-o

Thanks for the advice. I used to read the Compuserve Amiga forums regularly. It's nice to see that the Amiga community is still as helpful as ever.