Why would you have bought an A560?

[sim085]

Hi,

While browsing about Amiga stuff I came across the A560. The A560 is a network card which connects to the side expansion slot of the A500 and A1000. Now why would someone have bought an A560 back in those days?

Regards,
Sim085

[redrumloa]

-edit-
My mistake, wrong product.

[taunusand]

I have never seen an A560 :-?
Maybe for A1000's, office network or something like that.

[AmigaHeretic]

sim085 wrote:
Hi,

While browsing about Amiga stuff I came across the A560. The A560 is a network card which connects to the side expansion slot of the A500 and A1000. Now why would someone have bought an A560 back in those days?

Regards,
Sim085

To transfer data between other computers?  I guess anything you would do on a network really.

The Amiga isn't that old Geez ;-)

Networks were around way before the A1000 or the C64.  

Even Ethernet was developed in the early 70s I believe.

[trip6]

arcnet was around in the 70's....

ethernet standards were not ratified until the 1980's...

[sim085]

Yes, but was there really any software which made use of this technology? Also the A560 connected to the side of the A500 which meant that a hard disk could not be connected; in other words the software to use this device would have had to be loaded from disks ... or!?

[xPhilx]

Maybe the answer is, as with all things Amiga, "because we can".

[JC]

My A500s hard drive had a pass through so that you could plug in other devices such as the A560. I personally had a commodore cd rom drive plugged into the side of my 500s hard drive which I used mostly for cdtv titles.

[trip6]

@JC

What type (brand) of hard drive and model was it that had the pass-through? just curious... never seen one...

[kolla]

A560 was an arcnet card, not ethernet. The usage was the typical things, sharing filesystems, printers etc. The software was early versions of Envoy I guess, or the TCP/IP-stack AS225. There was also the A2060 card for zorro machines.

A2065 was the ethernet equivalent, and is still quite commonly in use. I've never heard of an A565, sadly - it would be quite high on my wish list :-)

[mongo]

sim085 wrote:
Yes, but was there really any software which made use of this technology? Also the A560 connected to the side of the A500 which meant that a hard disk could not be connected; in other words the software to use this device would have had to be loaded from disks ... or!?

Commodore's TCP/IP stack had support for it, and the A560 had an auto-boot ROM so you could boot off of the network.

Also keep in mind that hard disks weren't exactly cheap back in the day.

[weirdami]

Also keep in mind that hard disks weren't exactly cheap back in the day.

Back then ("in the day", as it were), people that really needed loads of storage would've used those big reel-to-reel tapes because people that needed that kind of storage would've been working in a place with the kind of giant machines that used them.

[JC]

It was a supra drive I believe, it had extra ram and a switch that would allow you to turn just the hd off. If I remember correctly the GVP hd's had pass throughs as well.

[sim085]

... but does anyone have screen shots (or can explain) what one would have seen when starting his A500 with such a device connected?

[rkauer]

 If no server to boot the machine remotely, pretty much identical to the standard machine. :roll: