Zorro II or ISA Ethernet card

[Motormouth]

I have kinda of a good problem on my hands.

I have only one slot left open in my A2000, I want to put an Ethernet card in it, but  Should I put the Ethernet card on the PC side or the Amiga Side?

I have my A2000 almost fully expanded out.
The A2000 has a Fusion Forty with 32megs ram
it has  all four 16 bit ISA cards extension.

The computer currently has a the following Zorro boards:
Trumpcard Pro Scsi
A2058 with 2 meg
Picasso II+
and a Bridgeboard with 8 Megs and with a Rev to 486 75 Mhz 486BL3

On the ISA side I have the following:
the Bridgeboard
a Cardinal SoundVision 16 bit ISA with SVGA-Sound-SCSI, and Game port
An IDE-floppy-serial-parallel 16 bit ISA card

This config leaves one open slot, either a Zorro II or ISA card, I would like to have Ethernet available for both the Amiga side and the PC side

the Ethernet cards I have available are
Zorro II a2065
NE2000 ISA
or Etherlink III ISA

Any Ideas?

[mechy]

Use the 2065. it can be shared on the pc side side. the A2386 can share almost everything. A diamond speedstar 64 isa video card( i think it was) will overclock the isa bus and speed everything also.finally ditch janus and look at SXSERV on aminet,its way better replacement.. .i think most old stuff was most compatible with a soundblaster.. been too long. this is all from memory when i was pushing a 386sx board to the limit long ago
Oh worst case, ditch the ide card and use the sound cards scsi,that would free up a slot for the NIC .It would also give the possibility of 100Mbit.Use a realtek compatible card if poss.

good luck

Mech

[Darrin]

Bloody hell.  Talk about a dream A2000.  Doomy would wank himself to death over that!  

[Tension]

Use the 2065. it can be shared on the pc side side. the A2386 can share almost everything. A diamond speedstar 64 isa video card( i think it was) will overclock the isa bus and speed everything also.finally ditch janus and look at SXSERV on aminet,its way better replacement.. .i think most old stuff was most compatible with a soundblaster.. been too long. this is all from memory when i was pushing a 386sx board to the limit long ago
Oh worst case, ditch the ide card and use the sound cards scsi,that would free up a slot for the NIC .It would also give the possibility of 100Mbit.Use a realtek compatible card if poss.

good luck

Mech

Was about to offer some advice, but this guy clearly knows his stuff.

Therefore all that remains is for me to call you a jammy bastard for having such a premium setup.

Good day Sir.

[J-Golden]

Hmmm, Most of the sound cards from that day had proprietary IDE/SCSI connections on them that only allowed them to connect a CD-ROM so I don't know if using that for the primary PC-HD would work as a solution.

[spirantho]

A couple of points....

I don't think you can run an Amiga Ethernet card from the Pc side, but you can do it the other way round. Would be interesting if I'm wrong though!

I do know however, that you cannot use a sound card for a hard disk. Not only is the bus not standard IDE (they'd not standardised ATAPI yet) but the BIOS wouldn't understand it anyway.

Nice setup though - you found a SL3 chip!

[Zac67]

A diamond speedstar 64 isa video card( i think it was) will overclock the isa bus and speed everything also.

Err - you got any further info on that? I don't think it's possible to overclock ISA from a card's perspective.

[Xanxi]

Err - you got any further info on that? I don't think it's possible to overclock ISA from a card's perspective.

Yes the BBGuide mentions that some boards can take over theISA bus and clock it faster, the Speedstar for instance.
As for the NIC, etherbridge works good except that i have found that bridgboards sometime don't boot at all in supercharged amiga computers because they do not get enough power from weak psu. This happens in my A4000. After some reboots it works again. Can be annoying if you want to access the NIC anytime.

[Zac67]

Are you referring to:

Some video cards also set their own bus speed on the system, which would yield accellerated displays.

? Display accelleration has nothing to do with bus overclocking, so I'd venture it's a myth.

[Crumb]

With a 286 card you can get 300-400 KB/s transfers using etherbridge.device

[Motormouth]

Use the 2065. it can be shared on the pc side side. the A2386 can share almost everything. A diamond speedstar 64 isa video card( i think it was) will overclock the isa bus and speed everything also.finally ditch janus and look at SXSERV on aminet,its way better replacement.. .i think most old stuff was most compatible with a soundblaster.. been too long. this is all from memory when i was pushing a 386sx board to the limit long ago
Oh worst case, ditch the ide card and use the sound cards scsi,that would free up a slot for the NIC .It would also give the possibility of 100Mbit.Use a realtek compatible card if poss.

good luck

Mech

Thanks for all the responds.
@Mech,
How would you get the Bridgeboard to use the a2065.  This would be the my preferred route
I guess I have seen programs out there to use a ISA ethernet on with AmigaOS, do they work well, haven't attempted to use them?

[Motormouth]

Was about to offer some advice, but this guy clearly knows his stuff.

Therefore all that remains is for me to call you a jammy bastard for having such a premium setup.

Good day Sir.

*sigh*  
Well I really haven't been able to get Ethernet working yet, or I would not have posted.

It is a nice setup but compared you guys with AGA, Uber Towers, 060, PowerPC, PCI slots, and OS 4.1, it is not really that up to date.

This computer has only been together for about a month.  I have had several frustrating configuration issues particularly getting the Trumpcard SCSI working with the Fusion Forty, and getting the OPL3 sound on the Cardinal soundvision to work properly.  Oh and the IRQs on the PC Side; I remember why I bought an Amiga in the first place.

The last place I am stuck on is on the ethernet, I have never setup ethernet on a dos system this old or attempted to get A2065 ethernet working with the PC or visa versa....

[Motormouth]

Two links that might be useful especially for the A2386sx Bridgeboard users out there
One:
http://homepage3.nifty.com/sandy55/Interposer/386_upgrade.html

it explains all the 386sx upgrades that are out there......
They occasionally come up on ebay.

Also the ISA bus overclocking, using the approprate video board, that many of you had referred to, and general overclock can be found on:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~davem2/overclock/a2386.html

[Jeff]

I can verify that the Evergreen model 300 rev to 486 at 75mhz and the Cyrix 486 at 50mhz both work great with the A2386.

[J-Golden]

With a 286 card you can get 300-400 KB/s transfers using etherbridge.device

Now see I'd go this route because it is cheaper and that lets you free up the Zorro slot for any half length card you may want to get like a USB thingy ma bobber.

Really, since you are dealing with A2000 architecture can you'r miggy really take advantage of more bandwidth?