Silicom is the first company to develop PCMCIA Ethernet adapters compatible with the HP 100/200LX. We first mentioned two of these PCMCIA cards on page 10 of the January/February 1995 issue. The Silicom PCMCIA Ethernet SPE Card is an Ethernet adapter card that comes with specially developed Support Driver software, allowing the card to work with the HP 100/200LX. The card lets you connect the HP Palmtop to all major Network Operating Systems, including Novell DOS 7, Netware Lite Workstation/Server, Windows for Workgroups 3.10 (NDIS), Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (NDIS), LAN Manager 2.0, LAN Manager 2.1, Banyan Vines 4.X (NDIS), Lantastic 5.0 with NDIS support, Lantastic 6.0 (NDIS), FTP PC/TPC (Packet), and FTP PC/TCP NDIS.
The other card mentioned in the January/February 95 issue was the Silicom PCMCIA EtherFlash Card, a PCMCIA combo card that comes with the same LAN connectivity features as the SPE card, and 1MB or 2MB of Flash memory built in. [Note: Silicom is still modifying the system driver software to allow the 100/200LX to access the Flash memory on the card. At present, only the LAN capabilities of the EtherFlash Card can be used.]
Either of these cards will allow you to connect your HP Palmtop directly to your LAN to exchange files and run any of the network DOS software (provided the software will run on an XT class machine CGA, 8086 CPU, 640k of system RAM). With these cards you connect to your LAN and have access to E-Mail and other network resources when other terminals are not available. It is also very handy for trouble shooting the network when you have a terminal that is not working and need an emergency portable terminal. I tested the Ethernet SPE Card on our Novell Netware 3.11 system. The LAN portion of the EtherFlash card is identical and should also work on the HP 100/200LX Palmtop PC.