How can I connect my A500+ to the Internet?

[Sim085]

Hello, I know this is possible, but hardware wise what do I need. I am planning to buy the Zeus once this becomes available. So power wise should not be a problem. However I still do not know what I need to buy (hardware) in order to connect my A500+ to the Internet.

[TjLaZer]

You will need a NIC. None that will work with the A500 I'm afraid. You will need a Zorro adaptor to be able to connect a Zorro II card to the side of the machine. Pretty ugly setup if you ask me. But it should work fine.

You're much better off getting an A2000!

[gunni]

I spent ages a couple of years back trying to connect my A500to the internet using an old dial-up modem I had lying around. In the end I set up a SLIP connection with my Linux laptop using the null-modem cable I used for Amiga explorer. Don't expect anything like a decent browsing experience though!

[ElectroBlaster]

Could this do the job?

http://lallafa.de/blog/amiga-projects/plipbox/

I am planning to make one myself!

[damiraga]

I remember reading about Palm Ethernet Cradle mod (serial to ethernet).
Here is one of the links I just found:

http://members.shaw.ca/cue64/palmcradle.html

[desiv]

Well, depending on your definition of "connect my A500+ to the Internet" there is the serial to ethernet option.
damiraga mentioned a hack of a palm ethernet cradle, but you can just buy a seriral to ethernet adapter.

I have 2 of those.
They work..

But they don't get you TCPIP on the Amiga.
They get you Amiga serial connecitons that can use the Internet for transport.

So, you can use one of those and from JRComm (or whatever your comm program of choice), you can connect to one of the many Telnet BBSs out there...

You can also try to use it with games that support serial (modem) connections if your serial to ethernet adapter has modem emulation.
I've played Firepower with it with someone many states away.
The game worked (a bit sluggish, and if we tried to use the CHAT window, it timed out. But we were able to play several games) OK.

But that won't get you using iBrowse/AWeb, FTP, etc...

Still fun tho to have the A1000 connecting to BBSs over the internet.. ;-)

desiv

[orange]

I got an old ethernet 'hub'/router that has two rs232 ports, several RJ45, also one old coax type. it can be used as rs232ethernet adapter. another option is using PC (most of them have rs232) as gateway/proxy.
better option is parallel_port2ethernet like ElectroBlaster said, but might be expensive. still, obviously a lot faster than serial.
perhaps scsi port on a590 (for eg) could also be connected somehow to ethernet or other scsi host.
best would be this accelerator from majsta: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=68459

[Sim085]

So browsing websites on my A500+ is out of the question without a PC?

[gunni]

well you could alway try with a dial-up modem...
I gave up after this much http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=58396

but I'd say like this [ Show youtube player ] is best bet

[Cymru]

The standard ports on an A500 will only get you to a modem and let you surf (Cerf) at dial up speeds. You need a ZorroII port or a Clockport to get to a Ethernet solution. The ZII option ($50) is simplest and you can buy the adapters from folks that make them by searching the forums; Amigakit sells Clockport adapters that would use a Subway USB device to get the a USB Ethernet dongle to then get online.

The ZII will require an Ethernet card: A2060, A2065, Ariadne, X-Surf, or the like and these will run in the $130 - 250 range. The Subway device cost about $90 originally, but now goes in the $200 - 300 range with the Ethernet dongle $15.

Browsers will run on a 68000, standard graphics, and such, but very slowly. With all the above investment you could buy an A1200 and use its PCMCIA port for a $25 NIC.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Cymru

Browsers will run on a 68000, standard graphics, and such, but very slowly. With all the above investment you could buy an A1200 and use its PCMCIA port for a $25 NIC.

Anybody thinking about 'like a cheap PC using any browser' should be aware that any CSS and JavaScript won't work. Even on an A1200 the browsing experience is very limited and on a A500+ it's not even worth to bother. Just my 2 cent.

[AmigaFriend]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Anybody thinking about 'like a cheap PC using any browser' should be aware that any CSS and JavaScript won't work. Even on an A1200 the browsing experience is very limited and on a A500+ it's not even worth to bother. Just my 2 cent.

I would say that you'll need at least a 030 accelerator board and at least 16MB of Fastram so surf with a little breeze. Unless you only do IRC and got to places like Aminet to download stuff, but for that better use a FTP client.

I remember to connect my A4000 to my XP computer through a SLIP connection, it worked, but good Lord i think the experience was worse than in 1996 when I used a 28800 modem to go to the net. Sssslllloooowwwww...

[Cymru]

Folks, he asked to get online with an A500. Yes a Raspberry Pi will do it too.