You can use windows internet connection sharing with a Parallel laplink cable, aka a 4 bit Plip cable, and with plip packet driver have it connect through a windows machine with a par port. 98/Xp... think it works on 7 too, not sure. Amiga PLIP has been done in two incompatible flavors, there's the 4 bit PC generic port one and an 8 bit version, it would depend on which version the PLIPbox implements.

Not to piss on your dreams though, but have you ever looked up benchmarks of SLI vs single card, very tiny improvements mostly, and I think only one game where it gets anywhere near a V3, so IDK if it's really worth losing $$$ and an expansion slot to it, when an ethernet card would be more useful.

What benchmark are you referring to for the voodoo 2 SLI ? This is not what I can read about voodoo 2s nor what I measured on mine.
Also it brings 1024x768 resolution which a single voodoo 2 can't do.

By the way @op, what kind of setup are you considering at the moment ? You only mentioned 4 cards. Are you building a micro ATX setup or an ATX setup ? What expansions are you willing to add that you may have not mentioned here ?

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-05-16, 19:59:

You can use windows internet connection sharing with a Parallel laplink cable, aka a 4 bit Plip cable, and with plip packet driver have it connect through a windows machine with a par port. 98/Xp... think it works on 7 too, not sure. Amiga PLIP has been done in two incompatible flavors, there's the 4 bit PC generic port one and an 8 bit version, it would depend on which version the PLIPbox implements.

Not to piss on your dreams though, but have you ever looked up benchmarks of SLI vs single card, very tiny improvements mostly, and I think only one game where it gets anywhere near a V3, so IDK if it's really worth losing $$$ and an expansion slot to it, when an ethernet card would be more useful.

Thank you. I have looked into internet connection sharing options, though I don't want to have to rely on a 2nd machine for internet access. If I can't find a Xircom alternative, I may wait until a PE3-10BT falls into my lap (not likely to happen, hehe) or consider sacrificing the V2 SLI setup. The main reason for it would be to run games in 1024x768, though I don't know how many games that can run at that rez are incompatible with the Voodoo5, so SLI may in fact be irrelevant. It also makes it "run in order," so to speak: 640x480 for the V1, 800x600 for the V2, and 1024x768 and up for the V5. By sacrificing the SLI setup and by getting an AWE64 Legacy (with an external Sound Canvas in place of the internal SCC-1,) I would free up one PCI slot and one ISA slot, which would allow me to add 10/100 etehrnet, USB 2.0, SATA...

Maybe you're right. In the meantime, as I mull it over, I'm going to keep my eyes open for a parallel-ethernet option. Are there gateways which will allow a PC to use a parallel port or serial port to tie into a LAN? I am interested in any and all solutions!

if you don't mind sacrificing the case, you could get an ISA riser, and get one or two extra ISA slots that way. You could insert an ISA network card.

Deksor wrote on 2021-05-16, 20:39:

What benchmark are you referring to for the voodoo 2 SLI ? This is not what I can read about voodoo 2s nor what I measured on mine.
Also it brings 1024x768 resolution which a single voodoo 2 can't do.

By the way @op, what kind of setup are you considering at the moment ? You only mentioned 4 cards. Are you building a micro ATX setup or an ATX setup ? What expansions are you willing to add that you may have not mentioned here ?

My setup is a Pentium III with a Voodoo5, Voodoo2, Voodoo1, SB Live!, Awe32, 3.5 & 5.25 floppy drives, CDRW & DVD drives, a 128gb SSD w/SATA-IDE adapter, and a 3.5 bay CF/IDE adapter, running on a P3 550 with DOS, WFW 3.11, and Windows 98. One serial port is reserved for an external modem, and I have daisy chained an external SuperDisk and a CF card reader on the parallel port.

The mobo is an Asus P2B with USB 1.0 ports. Future expansion cards could add USB 2.0, IDE or SATA card with 48-bit LBA support (for 1TB and up drives with rloew's TBPlus package - *if* I can ever figure out how to use it - I can't find much information on it or anyone whop uses it,) 10/100 or gigabit NIC (if I can find a gigabit card that works with DOS and WFW...) I think that that is about it for what could be added with this particular set up. The idea was to create the Ultimate DOS-Win3.x-Win9x machine, using Moslo Deluxe for older programs and games.

weedeewee wrote on 2021-05-16, 20:50:

if you don't mind sacrificing the case, you could get an ISA riser, and get one or two extra ISA slots that way. You could insert an ISA network card.

That was considered, and I may make another future build with an SBC with a crazy backplane with a bunch of slots. I hunted for an ATC case with 4 external 5.25 bays and 2 3.5 bays for this particular project, and worked hard on giving it a decent paintjob with Chalked Chiffon spray paint. I looked for an ISA riser cable to attach a riser card to, as there is space to rig such a setup, but I haven't been successful at locating one.

Experimentally, i.e. bench run and never built into a system, I've had this kind of riser working on a board with limited ISA slots, stuck in the leftmost slot (from case front) ...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-16068-3-SLOT-IS … Y-/113796235005

There's a device that exists with parallel port and ethernet, called a print server, intended for networking printers. Now I doubt these would work out of the box to transfer any other protocol but regular printer traffic. However, I did hear of a few running embedded forms of linux on the RISC or MIPS chips inside them, so could potentially be subverted to being a plip to interwebs device. But that's probably a bit of a rabbit trail.

There also exists, mainly for the industrial market, one or two examples of a UsB ethernet adapter that have DOS drivers. one such beast being the CATC-EL2. Not gonna be fast on USB 1.1 but prolly 50% faster than any parallel solution.

I just started thinking that an ESP 8266 should have enough lines to speak to a parallel port in decent sized chunks and while there's serial versions around on the vintage sphere if you didn't know, parallel versions seem as yet to be lacking. They show up as rs232 wifi modems etc. I think that's part of why parallel port one isn't as straightforward, as you can stick ATH commands in the dial string, that modem/RS232 things expect to deal with to establish connections, that set up and connect to the wifi. Whereas parallel port connections aren't expected to need this.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-05-17, 02:44:

Experimentally, i.e. bench run and never built into a system, I've had this kind of riser working on a board with limited ISA sl […]
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Experimentally, i.e. bench run and never built into a system, I've had this kind of riser working on a board with limited ISA slots, stuck in the leftmost slot (from case front) ...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-16068-3-SLOT-IS … Y-/113796235005

There's a device that exists with parallel port and ethernet, called a print server, intended for networking printers. Now I doubt these would work out of the box to transfer any other protocol but regular printer traffic. However, I did hear of a few running embedded forms of linux on the RISC or MIPS chips inside them, so could potentially be subverted to being a plip to interwebs device. But that's probably a bit of a rabbit trail.

There also exists, mainly for the industrial market, one or two examples of a UsB ethernet adapter that have DOS drivers. one such beast being the CATC-EL2. Not gonna be fast on USB 1.1 but prolly 50% faster than any parallel solution.

I just started thinking that an ESP 8266 should have enough lines to speak to a parallel port in decent sized chunks and while there's serial versions around on the vintage sphere if you didn't know, parallel versions seem as yet to be lacking. They show up as rs232 wifi modems etc. I think that's part of why parallel port one isn't as straightforward, as you can stick ATH commands in the dial string, that modem/RS232 things expect to deal with to establish connections, that set up and connect to the wifi. Whereas parallel port connections aren't expected to need this.

That riser card looks interesting. I am tempted to experiment. I am also very interested in the CATC-EL2. I wonder, since it works in DOS, if it will also work in Win 3.x? Thank you for the information!