Manawyrm/ISA8019 – RTL8019-based ISA network card, NE2000-compatible

Re:Manawyrm/ISA8019 – RTL8019-based ISA network card, NE2000... by ris on Thursday December 03, 2020 @06:42PM (#25297049)

It does make me sad that we're having to build new "clones" of pieces of hardware that were made, very literally, in their millions because we're so hopeless at recycling and salvage as an industry.

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Re:Manawyrm/ISA8019 – RTL8019-based ISA network card, NE2000... by Spooky23 on Thursday December 03, 2020 @07:48PM (#25297606)

Not at all. This is fun stuff.

There is a booming business in recycled gear.

An old boss retired and started getting calls from other geezers who were getting calls from old clients (he was a CE for DEC and SGI way back).

He ended up starting a little business with maintenance contracts or subcontracts with other providers. A couple of years ago he was making a good buck and had 7-8 guys in the field.

Usually customers were really big or really small and had some ancient system that was too expensive to figure out. One utility depended on a cluster of 33Mhz PowerPC AS/400 boxes to do their billing — they paid a lot of money for best effort break fix. Another used 286 PCs for controlling elevators.

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Re:Manawyrm/ISA8019 – RTL8019-based ISA network card, NE2000... by tssva on Thursday December 03, 2020 @07:09PM (#25297303)

ISA network cards are actually readily available on eBay for about $20.

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Re:Manawyrm/ISA8019 – RTL8019-based ISA network card, NE2000... by kwhitefoot on Friday December 04, 2020 @04:15AM (#25300462)

I've been selling a lot of old ISA stuff to retro computing enthusiasts here in Norway, pretty much the only thing that doesn't sell seems to be network cards!

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Re:Manawyrm/ISA8019 – RTL8019-based ISA network card, NE2000... by tssva on Friday December 04, 2020 @02:46PM (#25306818)

Although not all, a great number of retro computing enthusiasts seem focused on home system configurations. For the most part home networking didn't become a thing until the PCI era.

I have a Zenith/Heathkit Z-160 luggable, an 8-bit ISA bus system, which I installed an 8-bit ISA network card in. 8-bit ISA network cards are much more difficult to find than 16-bit ISA network cards but still it was only $20 on ebay.

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