Amiga 500 with GVP A530: SCSI to Ethernet adaptor, possible?

[Florida]

Anyone tried an Asante EN SC SCSI to Ethernet adapter on an Amiga 500 with a GVP 530? Does Parallel Port to Ethernet exist? Stock A500 with 1MB RAM, kick 1.3.

[AmigaClassicRule]

Solution: A1200/A600.

It is VERY DIFFICULT and in some models not worth it and impossible to have internet connection in ALL OF THE AMIGA models, all, all, all, ALL except for the A1200/A600. Especially the A1200, especially this model is the only Amiga model THAT EVERYTHING IN IT IS EASY. Hard drive in it easy, USB port on it is easy, internet connection on it is easy, and even running AmigaOS 4.1 on it is easy, EVEN towering it and allowing you to play quake games on it IS WAY easier than any other model out there.

So if you want internet on an ANY Amiga model, A1200. You want to run AmigaOS 4.1, then you should have A1200 computer and if you want USB get an A1200. Want an Amiga model with the highest rate for potential new hardware development, A1200 is the way to go. It is that simple.

I had the choice between two A4000D and both of them have video toaster and all sorts of hardware upgrades and A1200 and I toke the A1200. Because I knew if I wanted to get any of these A4000 computers with internet I am going to have hunt down a VERY RARE and VERY expensive card to give it ethernet support and it is not even wireless.

[Zac67]

@ACR Ethernet NICs for Z2 are not rare, that's bs.

@Florida
Connecting the hardware is no problem but I don't think there's any driver...
Parallel or serial port is possible with another machine (usually a PC) set up as a router with Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP). You could use an old 386 running Linux.
A 1 MB A500 will leave you very little memory to work with once the IP stack is up.

[spirantho]

An A4000 is *much* easier to expand than an A1200.

There's lots of ethernet cards out there that just plug and go, such as my Ariadne, the Hydranet, and lots of others.
Then you can have a Deneb (again, like I do) and connect a cheap USB ethernet card.
Also, you can have a Prometheus (which, once again, I have) and use a bog standard RTL8029.device which you can get for a fiver. You can probably get wireless for that too but I've not looked.

I have an A4000, a B2000, an A1200 and an A600 all ethernettable, and have had no difficulties with any of them.

It's no more difficult to get an A4000 online than an A1200, in fact I'd say it's easier because you don't have to sacrifice your PCMCIA slot.

Edit: For reference, I'm pretty sure there's no SANA-II drivers for ethernet on the SCSI device, I'm afraid. However, I believe you could use a Mac emulator to go online with it!

[mechy]

This is total nonsense. Zorro ethernet boards are not rare. The 1200 is actually a worse base to build on with all the things that need to be fixed, and when having done that,the 1200 will still be slower and have more bottlenecks in the end when compared to a fully expanded 4000.You can also use cheap usb ethernet off the deneb USB cards and then there are the mediator pci ethernet too if you have one. You seem to have made your choice due to lack of knowledge.

Mech

Solution: A1200/A600.

It is VERY DIFFICULT and in some models not worth it and impossible to have internet connection in ALL OF THE AMIGA models, all, all, all, ALL except for the A1200/A600. Especially the A1200, especially this model is the only Amiga model THAT EVERYTHING IN IT IS EASY. Hard drive in it easy, USB port on it is easy, internet connection on it is easy, and even running AmigaOS 4.1 on it is easy, EVEN towering it and allowing you to play quake games on it IS WAY easier than any other model out there.

So if you want internet on an ANY Amiga model, A1200. You want to run AmigaOS 4.1, then you should have A1200 computer and if you want USB get an A1200. Want an Amiga model with the highest rate for potential new hardware development, A1200 is the way to go. It is that simple.

I had the choice between two A4000D and both of them have video toaster and all sorts of hardware upgrades and A1200 and I toke the A1200. Because I knew if I wanted to get any of these A4000 computers with internet I am going to have hunt down a VERY RARE and VERY expensive card to give it ethernet support and it is not even wireless.

[mechy]

Anyone tried an Asante EN SC SCSI to Ethernet adapter on an Amiga 500 with a GVP 530? Does Parallel Port to Ethernet exist? Stock A500 with 1MB RAM, kick 1.3.

If there were drivers,in theory it would work. but there are none i know of.

another solution albeit slow would be use a lantronix serial to ethernet
adapter.. these were common used on early c64 days before ethernet solutions came available. they should work on the A500.
look for usd-10 and uds-100  there are several others that may work.
it will be very slow but should work.

mech

[Karlos]

It's no more difficult to get an A4000 online than an A1200, in fact I'd say it's easier because you don't have to sacrifice your PCMCIA slot.

In my opinion, that was one of the best sacrifices. Having a network connection on my A1200 machines has increased their productivity an order of magnitude more than the old CD drive that was hogging that slot ever did. Now they can go online, access shares and other resources over the LAN, exchange files with each other without ever having to get floppy disks involved and have a safe place to back up stuff.

In fact, I don't miss optical media at all. I can use another machine's DVD if necessary. Every burnable update to OS4.1 for my PPC A1200 has been simply mounted using MountISO and the contents simply transferred to a spare bootable partition for local installation.

[freqmax]

How much RAM does one need to work with internet?

@Karlos, thats why I would have liked to see Ethernet on the FPGA-Replay

[bbond007]

How much RAM does one need to work with internet?

@Karlos, thats why I would have liked to see Ethernet on the FPGA-Replay

It really depends on what you are going to do. Really probably 16MB should do.

For the A500 you may want to try one of these serial to bluetooth adapters. I use one with my Minimig but so far I have been unable to get it to connect to windows7 via PPP which is my ultimate goal. I suspect with linux I'd have no problem.

http://www.provantage.com/siig-id-sb0011-s1~7SII206V.htm

[Florida]

I think I will look into the 'lantronix serial to ethernet adapter' route that Mechy mentioned. I like a hard wired solution.

[freqmax]

It really depends on what you are going to do. Really probably 16MB should do.

Getting past 8 MB on a A500 is hard even with the best expansions. 16 MB is the limit of the MC68000. So I dault this value really reflects how it works.

For the A500 you may want to try one of these serial to bluetooth adapters. I use one with my Minimig but so far I have been unable to get it to connect to windows7 via PPP which is my ultimate goal. I suspect with linux I'd have no problem.

Microsoft can't make good software nor offer sane licenses. And I prefer wired.

[Cammy]

Once the ACA520 from Individual Computers comes out all A500 owners will have a good Ethernet option, so just wait patiently and start saving. It will have 8 or 16MB RAM, IDE, CF slot, a 68020 (or EC020), Ethernet and possibly even USB. At least that's how it was looking the last time I was reading about it, and it'll be out this year some time.

[giZmo350]

Once the ACA520 from Individual Computers comes out all A500 owners will have a good Ethernet option, so just wait patiently and start saving. It will have 8 or 16MB RAM, IDE, CF slot, a 68020 (or EC020), Ethernet and possibly even USB. At least that's how it was looking the last time I was reading about it, and it'll be out this year some time.

I will wait patiently! I have stocked up on a lot of the goodies for my A500 just for the ACA520. I currently have everything to get the A500 on the internet but the clock port board is just too big unless modified. But still, can't wait!
 
@Cammy, do you have a link to the most recent news on the ACA520?
Has Jens given any possible release date?

[bbond007]

Getting past 8 MB on a A500 is hard even with the best expansions. 16 MB is the limit of the MC68000. So I dault this value really reflects how it works.

Microsoft can't make good software nor offer sane licenses. And I prefer wired.

To most people (not to me) "the internet" means the the web and I'm just guessing 16MB is the minimum amount of RAM you need to run a browser. To do just FTP, and IRC and SSH/Telnet I'd think 4MB would be enough. I just said 16MB to cover all bases.

[Florida]

ACA520 it is then! I will wait patiently. Thanks for telling.