Amiga 500 /2000: Any networking option?

I am curious; I have recently acquired an Amiga 500 and 2000 off eBay last year and haven’t really touch it until recently where I learned how to transfer disk images from the PC back to the Amiga and convert it back to disks. Unfortunately, the process is rather slow so my question is this, is there anything available (hardware add on?) to hookup either one of the machine to my existence network with other PCs running Windows XP Pro / Vista? A RJ45 adapter for the classic Amiga maybe?

I'm currently using an old 56k external modem which hook up to the Amiga 2000 and connect to one of my 'very old' Windows ME laptop (only computer that still has a 56k modem in the house). Because I cannot find anything better, I have to use the crappy Hyperterm (on the PC) to connect to the Amiga 2000 using a program called Mindlink. I can establish the connection fine between the two computers but I can only connect at a slow pace 33.6k, which is painfully slow to transfer an image over to the Amiga. For some reason, I cannot connect it faster than 33.6k so it would take about 11 mins in order to transfer a 901k image over. In addition, hyperterm cannot batch transfer so I had to do it one at a time. :(

While browsing, I saw some post that it's possible to connect an Amiga to the internet, will it work with the old Amiga 500 or 2000?

Thanks for any info.

You can get Network 10Mbps Zorro II cards for the A2000 which would allow the Amiga to join your PC network. They are very hard to find though, but with some search you might find one. They are often multi interface cards, often combined with SCSI for HDD and CD drives.

An alternative option if your A2000 has a SCSI card is to fit an internat SCSI CD-Rom drive. You can then burn disk images (ADFs) to CD-R and access them this way in the A2000. It is a very good way to transfer files over from PC to Amiga and SCSI CD drivers are fairly easy to fine cheaply. Also A2000 Zorro II SCSI cards are quite easy to find and affordable. GVP SCSI cards are probably the best to look out for if you wanted to go that route.

It is also much easier if the Amiga has a HDD and a newer kickstart rom and Workbench version. Using Workbench 3.1 and some fast ram in the A2000 makes a nice system. But Workbench 2 or higher are OK. Workbench 1.3 is too restrictive for network use really.

Finally two other options. First is a program called Amiga Explorer. It is part of the Amiga Forever commercial Emulation package and allows you to connect any Amiga to a PC via Null Modem cable and directly drag and drop transfer ADF files from the PC to the Amiga's disk drive.

And the final option is something called the Catweasel PCI controller. Put this into a PC and connect a floppy drive and you can read and write ADFs, as well as access Amiga disks directly on a PC.

Originally Posted by Harrison:
And the final option is something called the Catweasel PCI controller. Put this into a PC and connect a floppy drive and you can read and write ADFs, as well as access Amiga disks directly on a PC.

That works like a charm, I'm using it since several years now.

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