PCMCIA card questions

[lurkist]

I am considering uses for my empty card slot.
One option is an ATA flash card solely for use as
an internet cache.  Are these battery backed?  how
long do the batteries last?  Will it clash with my
Blizzard 060?
Another option is a modem, replacing my serial port
one.  I've heard that the serial port is not fast
enough to take advantage of 56k modems.  Will the
card slot be fast enough?  Will this setup work
with Miami?
Cheers.

[lurkist]

Come on guys, I really need to know, then I
promise - no more PCMCIA questions!

[Castellen]

There are two types of PCMCIA memory cards.  One is standard volitile memory,
and the other is flash memory, which retains data when the power is removed.
Writing to flash memory is slow, and the A600/1200's type 2 PCMCIA slot is slow
and causes a lot of CPU loading.

Using it for internet cache (Voyager cache dir?) you'd have no major advantages
over using the hard drive like normal.

The maximum addressable PCMCIA memory space is 4Mbm so that's the biggest card
you can address.  You'll also find some cards will work OK, others won't work at
all.  You need to try them to know for sure.

Some CPU cards clash with the PCMCIA memory address range, I don't think the
Bizzard has the problem, but search on the web to found out for sure.

As for the serial port, I forget it's exact limit, but it's something close to a
56k modem. In short, your web browsing is barely going to be any faster with a
3rd party serial port.
You'd be better getting a fast CPU card, as a lot of time is spent on decoding,
scaling and drawing images.  A fast CPU and a nice GFX card would make a big
difference.

[Mad-Matt]

With an 060 running the show, ya built in serial port is more then adiquate for 56k modems.

as for pcmcia flashcards, i coukdnt say but i belive they only interfiered with older accel cards.

also, youll prolly be much better off using the port for a pcmcia ethernet card and getting yaself broadband instead.

matt
----

[chris]

also, youll prolly be much better off using the port for a pcmcia ethernet card

While we're on the subject, I spotted a driver for an Etherlink III PCMCIA Ethernet card on Aminet a few days ago.  I thought that the Etherlink III was a 32-bit card and wouldn't work in the Amiga's 16-bit card slot (reasoning partly backed up by the fact there wasn't a driver available for it).  Has anybody tried using one of these with that driver?  Does it work?

Chris