Re: Apple2 Ethernet card kits, group buy

[Lord Apollyon <i-liquify-spammers-nightly-Aug2000@paypc.com>]

(article snipped)

Seeing as I do embedded work and whatnot, I think the ideal Ethernet 
interface to use would be the Realtek RTL 8019AS (ISA/PnP, but it can be 
configured for "dumb" hardwired address decoding operation) for like 
$US5...  it is dog-simple to code to (NE2000 clone with an internal 16K 
FIFO), supports an 8-bit data path, etc, etc.  The transformer is 
another couple bucks.

Yes, doing the board itself is the most labour/cost - however, once the 
PCB is laid out - it's cheap to make panels. (You could fit 20 or more 
PCB's onto one panel).

I have successfully deployed it on some M16 (8Mhz 16-bit MPUs with 10K 
RAM, 64K of ROM) projects.... even doing a small TCP (ARP, basic ICMP, 
basic UDP, and TCP) stack for it.

It's definitely doable for an Apple // platform, though doing full 
TCP/IP might be reserved for a 128K or more system.

I think a 64k machine could run a "protocol-specific app" though.  Say, 
an ftp client that has all the tcp stack needed in the program.  
Likewise for telnet, or an ftp server, etc.

Could be doable.  You'd have to break out your assembly language of 
course. :)

=Rob=

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