Found an ethernet card for my 200LX

[Dave Britten]

100 mbit ethernet might be a bit overkill for an 8 MHz 80186, but it works great. I found a Netgear FA411 at the thrift store for a dollar this morning. It has "16-bit" prominently displayed on the label, so I figured I might be able to get it to work with really old hardware. It turns out all you need is lxcic, lxen2216, and mTCP to get up and running! I was able to do a bit of IRC, and telnet to the level29 BBS, and both programs were extremely responsive and usable.

An external power supply is highly recommended for this sort of thing (you're going to be tethered to the ethernet jack anyway, might as well use the power cable too).

https://i.imgur.com/rjLHoqN.jpg

[BobVA]

Nice! That's definitely one of those "because it *can* be done" adventures.

[Dave Britten]

(02-03-2020 01:52 AM)BobVA Wrote:  Nice! That's definitely one of those "because it *can* be done" adventures.

You got me there. But if I can find a workable DOS SSH client that supports modern SSL/TLS, then it could start to have some legitimate practical use around the datacenter. For now, it's just entertainment that I was lucky enough to stumble upon for $1!

[BobVA]

Do post if you find something! I remember the 95/100 was an extremely handy serial terminal for troubleshooting and equipment configuration back in the day.

It would be cool to use it on modern networks for same thing (or even just to SSH into a Raspberry Pi and tweak something from the couch.)

In any case you've clearly maxed out the fun/$ scale with that score :-)