Re: IIe & ethernet - TCP/IP?

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Peter Leonard <pleonard@cs.vassar.edu> wrote:

>Humor me here - 
>
>  Walking home after parking my car this morning, I came across an
>original IIe that someone had thrown out.  A little worse for wear,
>but it looks like it could still be operational.

That's great!

>  Here's my question - I've already got a LAN at home, and would love
>to add this thing to it.  I checked around the web, and it looks like
>the only Ethernet card apple ever released for the IIe was for the
>'enhanced' IIe, and was AppleTalk only.

The only Ethernet card Apple ever manufactured for the Apple II
was for the IIGS.  Just before they shipped it, they canned it.
The card exists and it works but only on the IIGS (assuming you
can bribe someone to give up theirs).

There was also an ISA-to-Apple Bus adapter that allowed the
use of an ISA Ethernet card on the IIGS.  This was a custom
project by one person.

>  Hardware-wise, would such a beast work in an original IIe?  And has
>anyone out there written a TCP/IP stack for either ProDOS or (even
>better!) DOS 3.3?  It's been about 8 years since I've even touched an
>Apple II, but I remember oh so well..  ;-)

TCP/IP is here for the Apple II, but again only for the IIGS.
It runs under GS/OS, not ProDOS or DOS 3.3.

However, it is not impossible to write a TCP/IP stack for the
IIe.  There are TCP/IP stacks for 8-bit Ataries and those
use the same 8-bit 65C02 uP as the IIe.  It is just that in the II
world, when something gets done for the 16-bit IIGS,
people just assume "it has been done on the Apple II" and
forget that there are millions of 8-bit IIe users that still need
TCP/IP.  ;-(