VOGONS


First post, by jewettg

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I have been wanting to get ethernet installed in my 486 PC. I finally found an ISA Ethernet card that I can install. It seems like it is a fairly common card that has lots of variants (versions of the card) available, but no one can supply the driver.

The one I have is the ACER version, see attached picture.

Any ideas where I can find a driver for this card? If I wanted to use it with MSDOS, is that possible? ..or do I need to install a version of Windows?

Reply 1 of 5, by Grzyb

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Here you are...

It seems to be based on RTL8019 - the drivers from Realtek should work as well.
Also, all you really need is the setup utility - the card is NE2000-compatible, after set up it should work with generic NE2000 drivers, included in pretty much all network systems.

Kiełbasa smakuje najlepiej, gdy przysmażysz ją laserem!

Reply 2 of 5, by jewettg

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Grzyb wrote on 2025-03-03, 12:47:

Here you are...
It seems to be based on RTL8019 - the drivers from Realtek should work as well.
Also, all you really need is the setup utility - the card is NE2000-compatible, after set up it should work with generic NE2000 drivers, included in pretty much all network systems.

THANK YOU for such a quick response! During all my searching, a very common theme was showing up, the types of cards and manufacturers. I could find lots for sale on eBay, but no drivers! So thank you for that.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

On a similar note: I built the 486 to resurrect my old Turbo Pascal 5 code that I wrote when I was in High School, and to relive some of my High School memories. I obviously want to do more.. play with old versions of Windows.

Are there any DOS based FTP (client or server) that I can run on my 486 PC? If I install any other OS versions - it will be really earlier versions ( Win 3.1, Win 95, and possibly the Xenix distros).
I had installed a Compact Flash Card device in the PC to replace the hard drive.. and it is how I am currently installing software (download and copy it to the card). I would love to keep the PC up and running and then copy software, documents, etc.. over to the PC over the network - the reason for the network card and driver.

Let me know what is available?

Reply 3 of 5, by myne

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You can always use the Ms tcpip add on and net use z: \\server\share
Just enable legacy SMB on w10/11

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Reply 4 of 5, by Grzyb

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jewettg wrote on 2025-03-03, 15:33:

Are there any DOS based FTP (client or server) that I can run on my 486 PC?

Yes, there's many - the best is mTCP.

Kiełbasa smakuje najlepiej, gdy przysmażysz ją laserem!

Reply 5 of 5, by Matth79

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Could also use the ROM socket to host XTIDE Universal BIOS if you need to upgrade HDD support beyond stock BIOS limits