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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Tyball on February 01, 2007, 12:06:03 PM
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I would like to add an ethernet connection to my Amiga 500. I understand that there are some classic hardware solutions, but I don't see one surfacing anytime soon and they would take up the expansion slot where my A530 is currently sitting and probably will remain a while longer. :-)
I soon hope to add an internal IDE controller so that I can add a HD or a solid state solution.
Maybe I could connect a PCMCIA Cardreader to my IDE-controller, and replecate a A600/1200 solution?
Or an USB-to-ethernet converter (via a SUBWAY USB controller, if I can get that working alongside my IDE controller which connects to the clockport). Or maybe an IDE-USB-Ethernet solution?
Any thoughts anyone?
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with all due respect, I can't see why you want to add an IDE controller while you have the superior GVP scsi controller on the A530.
Amigan Rule #1 - If you have a SCSI controller on your accelerator, USE it ! It will give much better performance than any other solution
Amigan rule #2 - Always choose SCSI over IDE, exception may be the FAST ATA board on an A1200, but that can also be discussed.
As for ethernet, are you sure you have drivers for the USB-ethernet converter ?
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@countzero:
I was boggled by your Amigan rules.
Would you say that my old WD scsi disk connected to a GVP 2000 HC+8 is faster than a relatively new Seagate IDE disk connected to my internal A4000 IDE controller?
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madsjm wrote:
@countzero:
I was boggled by your Amigan rules.
Would you say that my old WD scsi disk connected to a GVP 2000 HC+8 is faster than a relatively new Seagate IDE disk connected to my internal A4000 IDE controller?
If the disk is in good condition then yes..
A4000 IDE is PIO Modes only, which are slow.. SCSI tends to be faster...
Although if u can get yer hands on a new scsi drive that'd be even better :)
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Would you say that my old WD scsi disk connected to a GVP 2000 HC+8 is faster than a relatively new Seagate IDE disk connected to my internal A4000 IDE controller?
Because the internal IDE controller is slow. You have afaik no dma, which means that not only will it be slow, but it will also use up resources. SCSI has always been a much superior technology and even old scsi drives will outperform ide without dma.
SCSI is also superior when it comes to multitasking.
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madsjm wrote:
@countzero:
I was boggled by your Amigan rules.
Would you say that my old WD scsi disk connected to a GVP 2000 HC+8 is faster than a relatively new Seagate IDE disk connected to my internal A4000 IDE controller?
That's almost certainly true, the A4K IDE connector only supports PIO mode... which means the CPU has to mediate the entire transfer process. AFAIK the IDE sits outside the ChipRAM addess space, so there's no chance of usign the DMA.
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I decided to change from SCSI to IDE, because IDE is simply better.
yes, better.
no active/passive termination, no ID, no adapter,no other crap and you should compare price of for eg. 500Gb IDE and SCSI disks. what? you cant find 500Gb SCSI?
when I changed from 4Gb SCSI to 80Gb IDE, speed was dramaticaly increased probably due to greater storage density,
and not to mention noise/heat of those old SCSI disks.
I don't care much about CPU usage, 'cause Amiga is slow for realtime applications anyway.
IDE is builtin anyway so its much simpler to use it. and you can get cool looking round cables.
SATA might be even better, if there is adapter.
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Yes, in your and only in your case (A4000).
The original poster has a no-go situation since all IDE adapters for A500 are no-DMA capable, meaning CPU is busted with IDE interrupts in every disk I/O operation. Also, those devices are non-buffered.
You have noticed performance upgrade (SCSI to IDE) because that SCSI is probably 3-4 years older design than IDE drive. While they probably have same rotational speed (7200 rpm), IDE is better due larger cache and like you said more dense platter. However, I doubt about those new drives since Zooro 3 bus troughoutput could became bootleneck.
In either way, those 2 devices sucks big time since solid-state-storage as primary permanent storage media slowly overtakes the ever lasting race. No mechanics - no heat, noise; shock resistant; small weight and overall more reliable.
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I think the best choice would be to use cheap IDE disks with a IDE->SCSI converter on a DMA SCSI interface.
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@Tyball,
This is a workable solution. Cheap, and pretty neat hack to boot.
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22305
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I have two motivations for fiddling around with IDE besides my current setup:
First, I'd like to try a solid state solution, because I hate the noise of a HD on my 500. In the old days I had to make due without a HD and I simply can't get used to the noise.
Second, Whenever I take my Amiga anywhere I hate to take the A530 with me. An internal storage solution would benefit me there.
As for the speed decrease, I'll just have to see if it bothers me. If it does, I'll just ditch the whole idea.
Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone had experiences with ethernet on an A500. And I thought that adding IDE might broaden my options with respect to PCMCIA or something like that.
EDIT: @ Gregg: Thanks! I'll look into it. I knew it was bad when I sold my Palm :pissed:
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The easiest way to add ethernet to the 500 assuming you have the subway would be the norway ethernet module designed to plug onto the subway/highway/algor usb cards.
Another solution is to add zorro slotboard to the 500 side which is not very elegant(you mine as well go find a A2000).
The viper 520 was another solution for the 500,this gave 3x roms,ide for a 2.5" drive and a 020/33? mhz cpu with 8M ram,but these are scarce(i use one in my A1000).The viper would free up the side slot for a ethernet card hack(there are some plans to add a zorro slot to the side of the 500 on aminet).
There were A500 sidecars that could do arcnet iirc but this would eliminate your A530 and who runs arcnet?.The A530 scsi is a much better solution on a low end machine,since the scsi has very little overhead on the cpu and can dma.This makes much more sense on a low powered machine that needs the cpu for other stuff(i.e. tcp/ip u want to run).
scsi is superior in many ways,since it allows you to add many devices, is low cpu usage,and termination isn't a hassle in most cases,its very simple,especially on 50 pin scsi.Sadly,scsi seems to be the most misunderstood thing there is.In most cases you can jumper the drives on each end for passive termination,although active terminators are the best way.adding ide to a slow machine really doesn't make much sense. If you can jumper a ide drive master slave,surely you can jumper a scsi drive to terminated it and set the ID.
Another thing mentioned by some was scsi drives are old,slow,and run hot. I personally run IBM 10,000rpm 36gig in my 4000 that i'm typing this on,they are very quiet and do not run scorching hot like the seagates,so you don't have to stick with OLD drives.Ebay usually has quite a selection of cheap,newer scsi drives,there is no reason u can't use the 80pin 9 gig+ drives on amiga with 80->50pin adapter,they work fine on any amiga and i have picked them up new 9 gig ibm drives for $15!. Someone also mentioned newer ide's have bigger buffers which is not really true,scsi drives have had 16M buffers for many years,and up to 15K rpm drives,Ide is just now catching up.Scsi drives were also used in server duty applications and their MTBF(mean time before failure) was considerably longer than most IDE.Price is still a big difference between ide/scsi though scsi has gotten cheaper but not near ide..Another solution to get a ide CF card into the GVP is a Acard scsi-IDE adapter($$$) which would be great for low power usage.
I personally would only use scsi that is off the accelerator,this is a fast 32bit dma.Zorro 2 cards,be it scsi or ide are inherantly slow since they run off the 16 bit zorro2 bus,and this may not matter much when the cpu is 68000,but is slow/bad when its 68020+ or in zorro3 machines.
In the case of the A4000 ide,its slow and cpu intensive as pointed out,it's always amazed me to see people use this instead of the fast scsi on their warpengine,cyberstorm MK1,2,3/csppc they have installed.hehe
I have also used scsi->pcmcia card readers long before usb solutions were available on amiga,but these appear to only work as "drives" reading media cards and cannot be used to add pcmcia ethernet cards and such,i would imagine the same with the ide solutions.i wonder if a driver could be made to use them for ethernet?
The usb->ethernet adapters would be useable if there were drivers.
About the A1000 mentioned earlier,i have managed to put a viper 520cd in it,use it for a drive and ram,and 3x roms,and hack a zorro adapter from a IVS trumpcard 500 to the siee with a Xsurf ethernet card.The A1000 will surf the internet without missing a beat and its quite amazing something engineered in 1986 or so will adopt to later hardware.
Mechy
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mechy wrote:
The easiest way to add ethernet to the 500 assuming you have the subway would be the norway ethernet module designed to plug onto the subway/highway/algor usb cards.
Mechy
Are you sure you can plug a Norway to Subway ? It isn't mentioned anywhere, as subway doesn't seem to have that 38 pin expansion port.
http://www.e3b.de/usb/main_norway_e.html
http://amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=911
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/search.pl?product=norway
http://www.e3b.de/usb/main_subway_e.html
I think somebody should produce a simple ethernet card compatible with the clockport interface. It'll be great with the A500 clockports and A600 clockport on the new ram card. (preferably working with 68000)
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About the A1000 mentioned earlier,i have managed to put a viper 520cd in it,use it for a drive and ram,and 3x roms,and hack a zorro adapter from a IVS trumpcard 500 to the siee with a Xsurf ethernet card.The A1000 will surf the internet without missing a beat and its quite amazing something engineered in 1986 or so will adopt to later hardware.
Very impressive! What about Chip RAM though? I considered attempting to use my Viper 520 in my A1000, but gave up when I realized that I couldn't use my 2Mb Mini Megi. You must have found a way to have 2Mb Chip, otherwise I don't see how you can "surf the internet without missing a beat". I shudder to think what it would be like with only 512Kb Chip.
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orange wrote:
....and you can get cool looking round cables.quote]
You've never seen round SCSI cables? :hammer:
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mechy wrote:
The A1000 will surf the internet without missing a beat...
Does it look like this (http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=1862=6)? :-)
(sorry!)
- Ali
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I have a round (imagine that) SCSI cable as old as my Amiga that has an internal connector on one end, and internal connector on the other end, *and* an external connector on one end and and external connector on the other end. It only has two ends. It connects my CyberStormPPC SCSI-3 internal connector of my wide open A3000UX to the external connector of my faster-than-his-IDE SCSI RAID array. Granted my RAID array currently only has 50 some gigabytes, but, everything I have is in duplicate and I still have plenty of space.
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Its been a while since i had the 1000 up and surfing,but if memory serves,I set ibrowse2.3 to use only fast ram on the A1000/viper and turned chip off.. This got me around the chip ram problem for the most part. Dont get me wrong,browsing on a limited system with ocs chipset is anything but pleasureable,but it does do it reliably.The whole point was to see if it could be done for me :)
Doesn't the viper take a chip ram expansion on its header? i seem to recall reading something about this? Or is it just A1000 incompatible?
Mechy
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Its been a while since i had the 1000 up and surfing,but if memory serves,I set ibrowse2.3 to use only fast ram on the A1000/viper and turned chip off.. This got me around the chip ram problem for the most part. Dont get me wrong,browsing on a limited system with ocs chipset is anything but pleasureable,but it does do it reliably.The whole point was to see if it could be done for me :
I wonder if the stock A1000 is slower than the stock A500 or not. If not, and the Viper 520 card is fitted and somehow the Mini Megi could be added, then browsing on an A1000 can be exactly like it is on my A500. (here (http://eab.abime.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=13055) and here (http://eab.abime.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=12274))
It's definitely much more impressive to show off to those Mac and Windows freaks "Look what I can do with the first Amiga from 1985" than to say it's from a 1987 A500.
Doesn't the viper take a chip ram expansion on its header? i seem to recall reading something about this? Or is it just A1000 incompatible?
As you know there's a jumper on the Viper for Mini Megi, but no slot on the card for one. I already installed my Mini Megi before I got the card and I vaguely remember the manual said not to bother with the jumper if you've already got it. So I don't know what the jumper is actually for and don't know how you could add a Mini Megi to the card. The A1000 Agnus is not a PLCC chip so can't install Mini Megi on the motherboard. The A1000 Agnus would have to be bypassed somehow with Mini Megi on a separate card.
Anybody out there have an A1000 with 2Mb Chip?
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You could use a slingshot pro between the A500 and the A530 and your favorate zorro II ethernet card (ie a2065).
Not a very pretty solution, but it would work well.
I had an a500, a slingshot-pro, a GVP a500+, an a2065 (with an aui,thick ethernet, to 10baseT transceiver), a gvp 286, and a VXL*030 working for about a year and a half, until I bought an A3000, as expected the a2065 got quickly moved.
The only expansion they made for the gvp expansion slot was that gvp 286 (basically an atonce plus), however if memory serves the gvp expansion slot header had all the signals necessary to make a zorro II adapter.
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Why not use a SCSI net? Put a SCSI card on your server and link it to the A500's SCSI and you have a fast conection! :-D
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Arg! All these solutions are so complicated! Just get an A500Clockports module from Jens Schoenfeld, a Subway, and a USB->Ethernet device. Problem solved. No need to muck about with new drives or drive controllers.
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Matt, a SubWay (US$100), 500ClockPort (+55), USB/Ethernet (+???), easyly cost more than 200 Bucks! :-o
A cheap SCSI card for the server: less than 20 on Ebay. A "null-SCSI" chord: maybe 40. :-D
That's why I suggest this: economics!
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Amiga ain't a cheap hobby ;-)
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Matt_H wrote:
Amiga ain't a cheap hobby ;-)
I know it. :-(
Then why not prefer the cheapeast way when you can? :-?
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I decided to change from SCSI to IDE, because IDE is simply better.
Are you joking? And no wonder why you experienced a speed increase in some areas, considering that you compared a very old 4gig with a brand new ide disk. Not only is scsi faster, but the disks are usually way more reliable, which is one of the reason for the higher price tag. Professionals usually use scsi for this very reason and the fact that it gives much better perfomance, especially when it comes to multitasking. The fact they run hotter, is because they spin much faster due to them having higher perfomance.
I would like to see a high end web server using ide under alot of load... You are damn lucky if you get a few years from a modern ide disk before it starts failing.
I use ide/sata in my pc only because i am poor and need alot of space.
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Can you run USB-ethernet devices on Amiga now?