3 ms·

for people who want to try this with real hardware I would recommend the 3com 3c503 as the best choice of 16-bit ISA bus interface card. Or a real NE2000. There

for people who want to try this with real hardware I would recommend the 3com 3c503 as the best choice of 16-bit ISA bus interface card. Or a real NE2000. There were some weird NE2000 clones back in the day that were not so great.

jlundberg 4y ago
It is also possible to use a 3c509 in 8-bit ISA mode. Such a card might be easier to get hold of these days. https://github.com/hackerb9/3C509B-nestor https://github.com/hackerb9/3C509B-nestor
mbbrutman 4y ago
I use the 3C503 in a lot of machines. It is not a great performer, but it is well supported and solid. And it is an 8 bit card, which is handy for the older PC and XT class machines. Other notable cards for older machines include the NE1000 (8 bit), NE2000, Intel 8/16, Western Digital or SMC 8000 series. Many PCI cards work well; just look for a packet driver. For those of you without real slots the Xircom PE3-10BT device is great, but they are getting more expensive in the wild. SLIP and PPP work. PLIP works too, but I have not tested it myself. And there are even packet drivers that allow for Token Ring and Arcnet to be used; they emulate Ethernet.
tssva 4y ago
I have a few cheap noname NE2000 clones that I originally got in the mid 90s. I wouldn't have put them in a server but they were stable for me in DOS, 16 bit Windows, OS/2 and eventually Linux clients back in the day. Linux had some growing pains with the NE2000 drivers. I wouldn't have put them in a server but they always worked great for my home client machines. They still work great for me today in my retro machines. I use them with packet, ODI and NDIS drivers with no issue. I also have a real NE1000 that I use in a Zenith Z-161 luggable, an XT class 8-bit isa machine. This is the machine I mostly use mTCP on.
oso2k 4y ago
There's also a few NE2000 ISA clones on github now. https://github.com/Manawyrm/ISA8019 https://github.com/Manawyrm/ISA8019 https://github.com/hkzlab/ISA_8bitNetwork_8019 https://github.com/hkzlab/ISA_8bitNetwork_8019 https://github.com/skiselev/isa8_eth https://github.com/skiselev/isa8_eth
- hakfoo 4y ago
  I'm sort of curious what the best choice is for wireless on that tier of hardware. I sort of want to use the NTP client rather than waste a slot for a clock card, but I don't think I'm going to have a good spot with Ethernet access for the machine. Seems like the common consensus is $10 scrapyard NIC plus Wi-Fi bridge. TBH, I was always surprised that the consumer Wi-Fi bridge was never a popular thing. You'd think it would sell more easily to customers, because most PCs have had Ethernet on board since like 2000, and even adding a USB dongle means having to bring new drivers in. Now going full off tangent-- what happened to old wireless client hardware? If you go into any thrift shop, you're going to see a bunch of old 802.11g or n routers, but you usually don't see the adapters. I could see internal ones being scrapped with the PCs they were in, but I'd expect people who bought a new-spec router and matching adapter would replace them together.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    in the era of 802.11b and 802.11g being the hottest and greatest thing for wireless clients, there were very few desktop PCs equipped with interface cards for it. generally it was built into laptops for 95% of the clients... Your typical Dell business laptop from the year 2000 came with a minipci slot and a 2.4 GHz antenna cable, populating the slot with an 802.11b card was an option. or something like the original apple airport wireless AP and the wifi 802.11b built into macbooks from the era. or in an even earlier era you would find like PCMCIA/PC Card type 2 or type 3 interfaces with an 802.11b radio and antenna in them to stick out the side of your laptop.
    - hakfoo 4y ago
      But I figured a lot of people did buy USB dongles for their desktop, i. e. "set up the old PC for the kids to do schoolwork in another room nowhere near the router." There should be bags full of them everywhere. I actually have an 802.11b PCMCIA card sitting around. I bought it in 2003 because my university was rolling out a wireless network, accessible in about 1/6 of its surface area, and I was rocking a used Pentium II Thinkpad. Getting Slackware to handle 802.11 in those days was an amusing thing.

jlundberg 4y ago

It is also possible to use a 3c509 in 8-bit ISA mode. Such a card might be easier to get hold of these days. https://github.com/hackerb9/3C509B-nestor https://github.com/hackerb9/3C509B-nestor

mbbrutman 4y ago

I use the 3C503 in a lot of machines. It is not a great performer, but it is well supported and solid. And it is an 8 bit card, which is handy for the older PC and XT class machines. Other notable cards for older machines include the NE1000 (8 bit), NE2000, Intel 8/16, Western Digital or SMC 8000 series. Many PCI cards work well; just look for a packet driver. For those of you without real slots the Xircom PE3-10BT device is great, but they are getting more expensive in the wild. SLIP and PPP work. PLIP works too, but I have not tested it myself. And there are even packet drivers that allow for Token Ring and Arcnet to be used; they emulate Ethernet.

tssva 4y ago

I have a few cheap noname NE2000 clones that I originally got in the mid 90s. I wouldn't have put them in a server but they were stable for me in DOS, 16 bit Windows, OS/2 and eventually Linux clients back in the day. Linux had some growing pains with the NE2000 drivers. I wouldn't have put them in a server but they always worked great for my home client machines. They still work great for me today in my retro machines. I use them with packet, ODI and NDIS drivers with no issue. I also have a real NE1000 that I use in a Zenith Z-161 luggable, an XT class 8-bit isa machine. This is the machine I mostly use mTCP on.

oso2k 4y ago

There's also a few NE2000 ISA clones on github now. https://github.com/Manawyrm/ISA8019 https://github.com/Manawyrm/ISA8019 https://github.com/hkzlab/ISA_8bitNetwork_8019 https://github.com/hkzlab/ISA_8bitNetwork_8019 https://github.com/skiselev/isa8_eth https://github.com/skiselev/isa8_eth

hakfoo 4y ago
I'm sort of curious what the best choice is for wireless on that tier of hardware. I sort of want to use the NTP client rather than waste a slot for a clock card, but I don't think I'm going to have a good spot with Ethernet access for the machine. Seems like the common consensus is $10 scrapyard NIC plus Wi-Fi bridge. TBH, I was always surprised that the consumer Wi-Fi bridge was never a popular thing. You'd think it would sell more easily to customers, because most PCs have had Ethernet on board since like 2000, and even adding a USB dongle means having to bring new drivers in. Now going full off tangent-- what happened to old wireless client hardware? If you go into any thrift shop, you're going to see a bunch of old 802.11g or n routers, but you usually don't see the adapters. I could see internal ones being scrapped with the PCs they were in, but I'd expect people who bought a new-spec router and matching adapter would replace them together.
- walrus01 4y ago
  in the era of 802.11b and 802.11g being the hottest and greatest thing for wireless clients, there were very few desktop PCs equipped with interface cards for it. generally it was built into laptops for 95% of the clients... Your typical Dell business laptop from the year 2000 came with a minipci slot and a 2.4 GHz antenna cable, populating the slot with an 802.11b card was an option. or something like the original apple airport wireless AP and the wifi 802.11b built into macbooks from the era. or in an even earlier era you would find like PCMCIA/PC Card type 2 or type 3 interfaces with an 802.11b radio and antenna in them to stick out the side of your laptop.
  - hakfoo 4y ago
    But I figured a lot of people did buy USB dongles for their desktop, i. e. "set up the old PC for the kids to do schoolwork in another room nowhere near the router." There should be bags full of them everywhere. I actually have an 802.11b PCMCIA card sitting around. I bought it in 2003 because my university was rolling out a wireless network, accessible in about 1/6 of its surface area, and I was rocking a used Pentium II Thinkpad. Getting Slackware to handle 802.11 in those days was an amusing thing.