Date   : Mon, 06 Aug 2007 22:39:26 +0100
From   : julesrichardsonuk@... (Jules Richardson)
Subject: Emulating Econet hardware?

Johan Heuseveldt wrote:
> The EcoLink card has its own processor system on board. There were
> two versions. One with a Z80 from SJ Research

I didn't realise that SJ did one. But then other than the MDFS and the BEN, 
I've not really come across much of their stuff.

 > and one with a 6502 for which I don't know the manufaturer.
> A year ago, there was one on Ebay. Anyone seen it too?

That one's all Acorn :-) I've got one of those; unfortunately the software for 
it runs only on an old version of DOS (obviously all versions of DOS are now 
'old', but this wouldn't work past one of the early releases - an ex-Acorn 
chap did tell me why once but I'm afraid I forget...)

I wouldn't even know where to start in writing modern drivers for it - and 
there'd be little point anyway as the boards are so rare!

>> If you have a spare beeb i guess you could connect it via the user port to 
>> the PC's parallel port to act as a big "econet card".
> 
> Probably the best, and (still) quite a task as a software project! :-)

I believe that's what Acorn did to add Econet support to their VAX fileserver 
back in the day; it was simply a beeb with an Econet interface, hung off one 
of the VAX's serial lines. If it really was serial, then performance 
presumably wasn't very quick!

cheers

Jules