Eudimorphodon
Veteran Member
Recently I've sort of had the yen to try putting an Ethernet card in my old Tandy, but I'm realizing I don't quite know where to start. (I do have some experience with DOS networking, but it's very rusty and almost entirely limited to 386+ class machines.)
I've gone to eBay looking for compact 8-bit ISA cards, logic being if has an 8-bit bus it should be compatible, but it turns out those are apparently very rare animals. (It has to be a compact card because it'll need to fit in a Tandy 1000 EX with an ISA adapter. I'd also much prefer it have a 10baseT RJ-45 jack, I got rid of my last thinnet hardware fifteen-plus years ago.) Therefore it looks like what I need to find is a 16 bit card that's backwards compatible with 8-bit slots, and also has a packet driver that's compatible with XT-class processors; I do have a V-20 upgrade, if that makes a difference. Does anyone have any recommendations? In compact-ish cards I've seen the following for semi-reasonable prices:
(Mostly what I remember using with WfW-era software was 3c509s and AT/Lantics.)
A substantial majority of the cards are "jumperless" ones, and I don't know how that's going to fly in an XT. I remember back in the day some cards needed "plug and play" drivers while others used black magic setup programs to configure themselves that weren't standard ISA PnP, and I've never used either kind of card in an XT. Is any particular brand/chipset a better bet than others? (Or, conversely, are any of them just straight up no-gos?) Anyone have a good specific recommendation for a small XT-compatible Ethernet card?
I apologize if this question's been answered a million times and I've just been really bad at finding those threads. I've been trying to research some of the ins-and-outs of packet drivers for DOS, but I have yet to find a good rundown of what the best options are for the edge case of 8-bit only ISA slots and pre-286 CPUs.
I've gone to eBay looking for compact 8-bit ISA cards, logic being if has an 8-bit bus it should be compatible, but it turns out those are apparently very rare animals. (It has to be a compact card because it'll need to fit in a Tandy 1000 EX with an ISA adapter. I'd also much prefer it have a 10baseT RJ-45 jack, I got rid of my last thinnet hardware fifteen-plus years ago.) Therefore it looks like what I need to find is a 16 bit card that's backwards compatible with 8-bit slots, and also has a packet driver that's compatible with XT-class processors; I do have a V-20 upgrade, if that makes a difference. Does anyone have any recommendations? In compact-ish cards I've seen the following for semi-reasonable prices:
- Various "NE2000" clones
- 3c509 "Etherlink III" (many variations)
- Realtek 8019AS
- Intel Etherlink 16
- Various Artsoft and AT/Lantec cards
(Mostly what I remember using with WfW-era software was 3c509s and AT/Lantics.)
A substantial majority of the cards are "jumperless" ones, and I don't know how that's going to fly in an XT. I remember back in the day some cards needed "plug and play" drivers while others used black magic setup programs to configure themselves that weren't standard ISA PnP, and I've never used either kind of card in an XT. Is any particular brand/chipset a better bet than others? (Or, conversely, are any of them just straight up no-gos?) Anyone have a good specific recommendation for a small XT-compatible Ethernet card?
I apologize if this question's been answered a million times and I've just been really bad at finding those threads. I've been trying to research some of the ins-and-outs of packet drivers for DOS, but I have yet to find a good rundown of what the best options are for the edge case of 8-bit only ISA slots and pre-286 CPUs.