Ethernet/Wifi and Blizzard PCMICA advice.

[betajaen]

Hello everyone!

Years ago I was seriously a die hard Amiga fanatic, unfortunately I had to work on PCs during college and university and drifted away. Last month I stupidly threw away my Amiga 1200 (with all of the kit inside an EZ-Tower) which I really regret for doing right now, so I bought a new one today; along with a Blizzard MkIII 1230 @ 50mhz with a whopping 32 MB! A far cry from the original processor with 8 Megs of RAM I was used to all of those years.

Now, it's come to my attention that they don't play to well with the PCMICA slot which I want to use to fit a Ethernet or a Wifi card from Amigakit. After talking one of the chaps at Amigakit, there were two solutions presented; Get the USB adapter which fits onto the clock port and use a USB Ethernet/Wifi or get a Mediator (and tower kit) and use a PCI Ethernet card.

One route is very expensive but almost guaranteed to work (and allows me to use a graphics card for extra speed), and the other is less expensive route but more tricky to install and buy; which I assume the correct make and model of the wifi/ethernet USB device will have to work with the limited drivers we have.

So I come forth to my fellow Amigans, and ask - What should I do?

[Harrison]

Only the very first ram expansions and accelerator cards conflicted with the A1200's PCMCIA card slot. This happened if a card had more than 4MB of fast ram installed as it conflicted with an area of memory the Amiga needed to use for the card slot.

However all later ram expansions and accelerators do not have this problem and work perfectly well with the PCMCIA slot regardless of the amount of ram they have fitted. And your Blizzard MKIII 1230 should work perfectly well so you shouldn't have any such conflict issues.

[betajaen]

That is excellent news. I do remember having that problem with a Hawk expansion card my father bought for it; we have no problems with it for many years until a friend gave us a 8Meg spare SIMM he had and I decided to get a Squirrel SCSI interface and a CD-ROM. Which meant everytime I wanted to use a disk, I had to lift up the Amiga and change a jumper!

Anyway this is the exact wording on the name of the Blizzard accelerator "Amiga 1200 Blizzard MK III (3) 030 50mhz 32Meg". If your absolutely sure, I'll buy a Ethernet PCMCIA adapter on the monday.

[Harrison]

Yep. It should work perfectly with a network card installed into the PCMCIA slot.

BTW, I've got an Ethernet card from AmiKit and it works perfectly. They are a great company to order Amiga items from.

[betajaen]

Brilliant and thanks!

I agree Amigakit is a great company. I spend most of this afternoon torturing one of the sales staff about this. With the amount of goodies they sell, my new Amiga will be better and faster than my original one.

[Harrison]

Another place you should join to look for Amiga items is our sister site http://www.amibay.com. It is a forum based trading site where members can post for sale and wanted adverts, all at fixed prices, with no fees and a great community.

[betajaen]

Excellent. I haven't seen AmiBay before, thanks!

[TiredOfLife]

I suppose it depends on how much spare cash you have and how much you want to do with your Miggy.