Isa???

[Richard_The_Lionhearted]

I have a compaq presario 2200 and I am trying to replace the modem with an ethernet card. My problem is that I don't know what type of slot it is. It's black and says sl1 but the card that was in it says modem v.34 ISA. It's shorter than an ISA slot though.

[Ethyriel]

Do you have a picture, or a link to an exact model? It may be an AMR, or some other worthless slot.

How old is the system? ISA slots used to be shorter, I think it was a move to 16bit from 8bit that extended them.

[Richard_The_Lionhearted]

here

It doesn't say what type of slot it is though

[Ethyriel]

Well, it's hard to be sure, but I think it's probably ISA (8 bit, as opposed to EISA). I'm not even sure what an MCA slot would look like, but I think you're past that with a Cyrix 180.



When you're searching for a card, just make sure you get ethernet. That's mostly what we see these days, but ARCNet (Token Ring) looks like it was rather common back then, so it could be rather easy to slip up. I think this may be what you're looking for, but I'm really not sure.

Keep in mind that having such an old NIC present is likely to slow down your entire network.
Also, remember to wear a wrist strap. It's not a big deal now, but I think hardware was still a lot more sensitive back then; especially in a low end, Cyrix based Compaq.

Good luck with it!

[Richard_The_Lionhearted]

Thanks. That's exactly what it looks like. I can't find an ethernet card for it though. Do you think it would work if I turned the serial port into a USB port with an adapter and use a ethernet to USB adapter? I have the stuff, its just that I'm not sure if it will work.

[Ethyriel]

Did you check that link in my post? I found it with a google for '8bit ISA ethernet' without quotes. There was a lot of junk mixed in, but I didn't really try to refine it.

I honestly don't know how that would work, going serial to usb to ethernet. I'd guess if you had a problem it would be serial to USB on such an old machine.

Good luck