Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: mikeymike on August 27, 2009, 04:07:22 PM
-
Just out of curiosity really. I saw (I think) a USB interface for it, but that's about it.
-
There is/are soundcard(s) available for it as well (not sure of models,) and I think even the MP3@64 would work with it.
-
There are dozens of things to add onto the clockport, including the rarely seen real-time clock add-on. There are a couple of sound cards, USB solutions, the Catweasel floppy controller, fast, buffered serial and parallel ports, and a couple of MP3 decoders. See a list at http://www.amiga-hardware.com/ where you can browse hardware by connection.
-
A1200's clockport can be used for:
- Subway USB controller (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=137)
- Delfina sound card (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=326)
- Hypercom fast serial port (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=638)
- Hypercom 3 parallel port
-
if i remember correctly there's also SCSI.
-
SCSI for clockport. I am suspect not. Would have no where near the bandwidth
-
SCSI for clockport. I am suspect not. Would have no where near the bandwidth
you are correct i was thinking where the dataflyer+ connects,but this device connects to the IDE port just check the website.
-
Hopefully someone will have the vision to create a clockport Ethernet card that works with Amigas so all those A600 and A1200 users with 8MB Fast RAM can use it all online and not be limited to 4MB/5.5MB because of a PCMCIA network card. Then all we'd need is a 8MB/RTC/IDE/Clockport card for the CD32 and we'd be in expansion heaven.
-
Hopefully someone will have the vision to create a clockport Ethernet card that works with Amigas so all those A600 and A1200 users with 8MB Fast RAM can use it all online and not be limited to 4MB/5.5MB because of a PCMCIA network card.
Add a Subway and a USB Ethernet Adaptor....and here we go.
-
I wan't a clockport splitter. Can be somthing simpel that you have to change befor you boot. But the I could cange betwen USB, mp3 and more.
Espen
-
Add a Subway and a USB Ethernet Adaptor....and here we go.
That's a good option, but after the memory overhead of both Poseiden and an IP stack, you wouldn't be doing much. The RRNet works, but.... In any case, an unexpanded A500/A600/A1200 won't be able to do much with the BSD-based stacks. 8 MB would do it, but any geeky A600 is probably going to have an A603 with 2 MB of chip and no fast.
-
I wan't a clockport splitter. Can be somthing simpel that you have to change befor you boot. But the I could cange betwen USB, mp3 and more.
Espen
Clockport devices are notoriously picky about timing and where the power is connected. ;-) A splitter sounds dangerous.
-
That's a good option, but after the memory overhead of both Poseiden and an IP stack, you wouldn't be doing much. The RRNet works, but.... In any case, an unexpanded A500/A600/A1200 won't be able to do much with the BSD-based stacks. 8 MB would do it, but any geeky A600 is probably going to have an A603 with 2 MB of chip and no fast.
I know that its slow. I was able to get around 180 kb/s at max. on my A1200 but with 060 inside.
-
Clockport devices are notoriously picky about timing and where the power is connected. ;-) A splitter sounds dangerous.
Well, I am able to play mp3 files from USB harddrive on my Subway through the DSP of my Delfina without any problems.
-
I heard tale of a device that you can attach to the port that keeps your machine abreast of the current time and date. Incredible, eh? :D
-
Why would you use a clockport for that? If the common name were userport, I might consider attaching a clock to it.
-
Why would you use a clockport for that? If the common name were userport, I might consider attaching a clock to it.
Exactly :lol:
-
Add a Subway and a USB Ethernet Adaptor....and here we go.
This isn't a solution for 8MB A600/A1200 users, it's a slow option for accelerated Amigas at best. If there was a more effective way of connecting the RR-Net and suitable drivers it might be usable, but really we just need a real, dedicated ethernet or wireless card for the Amiga clockport. Maybe it could have an extra clockport on the card to daisy chain it to another expansion without requiring a splitter.
-
The CS8900 series (the chip used on the RRNet) doesn't reliably generate interrupts in 8-bit mode (per the datasheets), so it's up to the CPU to push the data around. (Those lines aren't wired on the RRNet, regardless.) Assuming the CPU could keep up with the traffic, a chip that does generate interrupts might produce suitable results. In either case, though, the card would be functional, and the higher-level protocols were designed with dropped frames in mind.
So really, the hardware isn't really the problem. It's the stack. AmiTCP and its derivatives have pretty hefty requirements, and a new, lightweight stack would need its own bsdsocket.library implementation to be useful to existing software. Open source applications could be modified to fit.
-
This isn't a solution for 8MB A600/A1200 users, it's a slow option for accelerated Amigas at best. If there was a more effective way of connecting the RR-Net and suitable drivers it might be usable, but really we just need a real, dedicated ethernet or wireless card for the Amiga clockport. Maybe it could have an extra clockport on the card to daisy chain it to another expansion without requiring a splitter.
The A1200 clockport is an 8 bit databus, 4 bit address bus connector with extreme and artificial wait states to allow slow clock chips to work. 4 bit address bus means that there are a total of 16 possible addresses, each one byte wide. Each address is four bytes away from eachother, so there's no way to combine word or long word accesses to get faster access.
There was exactly one (!) card that allowed daisy chaining with exactly one other card and AFAIR it was the Melody+Twister combination. It was specifically designed to allow this kind of thing, and obviously, because each card only used part of the address space.
It is nearly magic that a USB card like the Subway actually works on that kind of bus. The Subway performs much faster on Zorro card clockports due to the better timing though.
The RRNet could work on the Amiga clockport, but it lacks an IRQ which probably makes it awkward software wise (polling for interrupt bits is a bit too retro). Anyway, the speed of such a device (or a redesigned version with IRQ support) on an original A1200 clockport probably won't be much higher than a Subway + USB Ethernet adapter solution, because in the end, it comes down to copying memory across the bottleneck of the clockport.
-
Polling works well on the RRNet, but deciding when and where to poll quickly becomes a problem. I was using vblank and a low priority idle loop, which worked well in a test harness. Periodically forcing a softint to boost priority improved network performance, but the scheme I was using didn't play well with others. :-/
EDIT: I should add that network interface polling is (or was) in vogue: http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/polling/
-
I guess daisy chaining and splitting on the A1200 clockport is out of the question then.
Please don't think I was blaming Poseidon for the slow speed of the Subway/USB ethernet solution, I'm aware it's the clockport that is the real bottleneck.
But surely a new, dedicated clockport ethernet card would work with less RAM than using a USB ethernet card through Poseidon. I wouldn't have expected significant speed increase, but at least a card like this would be of use to people with un-accelerated Amigas with clockports and extra RAM, especially since PCMCIA ethernet cards will reduce most 8MB cards to 4MB, and 4MB isn't fun to use online.
-
How do cards like the Z4 busboard work with multiple clockports ( never used mine ). Do they run throught the zorro space ?
-
I guess daisy chaining and splitting on the A1200 clockport is out of the question then.
Please don't think I was blaming Poseidon for the slow speed of the Subway/USB ethernet solution, I'm aware it's the clockport that is the real bottleneck.
I wasn't thinking that;)
But surely a new, dedicated clockport ethernet card would work with less RAM than using a USB ethernet card through Poseidon. I wouldn't have expected significant speed increase, but at least a card like this would be of use to people with un-accelerated Amigas with clockports and extra RAM, especially since PCMCIA ethernet cards will reduce most 8MB cards to 4MB, and 4MB isn't fun to use online.
You don't have to load all class drivers with Poseidon. You need the main library (120 KB), the subwayusb.device (13 KB + 16 (?) KB), the hub.class (12 KB) and the ethernet driver (18 KB + 4 (?) KB), the Poseidon overhead can probably be less than 200 KB of memory. You don't even have to load the MUI stuff... But sure, having a dedicated driver only for a clockport ethernet module would probably only need about 10-12 KB ram.
Anyway, Poseidon was not meant to be used on unaccelerated A1200 machines without additional RAM.
-
How do cards like the Z4 busboard work with multiple clockports ( never used mine ). Do they run throught the zorro space ?
No. They use multiple address spaces at an offset of $4000 for each clockport (base address is 0xd80001, which clashes with some chip area on A4000D/T machines -- peeking and poking in that area on an A4000 machine causes all kinds of havok to the IDE/SCSI port). Programmers that want to support these additional boards need to adapt their drivers for it and detection of multiple clockports that are not mere mirrors of the first one, is not trivial.
-
i wonder how the QUADDRAPORT works.
-
i wonder how the QUADDRAPORT works.
Also Jens is planning an optional clockport expander, for his IDE-Fix Express (rev 2)
I wonder how this works, and if it mean a faster clockport and use of a second clockport expansion!?
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=42&products_id=425
-
I heard tale of a device that you can attach to the port that keeps your machine abreast of the current time and date. Incredible, eh? :D
I just blu-tack a watch to my Amiga!
-
Clockport splitter -
http://www.robthenerd.com/show.php?sect=projects&sub=clockport
-
Hopefully someone will have the vision to create a clockport Ethernet card that works with Amigas so all those A600 and A1200 users with 8MB Fast RAM can use it all online and not be limited to 4MB/5.5MB because of a PCMCIA network card. Then all we'd need is a 8MB/RTC/IDE/Clockport card for the CD32 and we'd be in expansion heaven.
Hear hear!!! :hammer:
Also, dont forget that TCP/IP is not the only thing to use ethernet for, there's also Envoy and various other "pre internet" protocols that use SANA2. I want my CD32 machines online primarly to avoid "floppy net" and hazardous (and with SX32, incompaible) pronet/parnet/serial cables.
Clockport adapter for CD32 and clockport ethernet has been on my wish list forr years :)
-
I heard tale of a device that you can attach to the port that keeps your machine abreast of the current time and date. Incredible, eh? :D
(http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh286/mmarks_2008/robocop.jpg)
(http://media.photobucket.com/image/i%252527d%20buy%20that%20for%20a%20dollar/mmarks_2008/robocop.jpg)
-
Off topic, but a Fugitive/Bourne-style movie that's true to King's original Running Man novel would be cool. It doesn't have to be future-glitzy and filled with 80's sci-fi mock commercials. A setting similar to Children of Men would do just fine.
EDIT: Actually, Children of Men satisfies the requirement quite nicely. I guess a new Running Man doesn't have to be made. :-P
-
Clockport devices are notoriously picky about timing and where the power is connected. ;-) A splitter sounds dangerous.
It has been done before. But harde to buy now.
http://hardware.amiga.hu/exp/quadroport (http://hardware.amiga.hu/exp/quadroport)
http://www.robthenerd.com/show.php?sect=projects&sub=clockport (http://www.robthenerd.com/show.php?sect=projects&sub=clockport)
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=560164 (http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=560164)
I would like one
Espen
-
from my point of veiw ( if it is possible ) the best thing for the clockport is a wireless module with a external reciver.
-
@delshay
Meaning an external clock port? Or a wireless network adaptor? As was said, networking across the clockport is possible in theory, but needs to be polled which slows everything down, and shifting data across the clockport is also a slow business, especially when you talk about splitting it between, say, a soundcard, networking and USB.
-
@delshay
...shifting data across the clockport is also a slow business, especially when you talk about splitting it between, say, a soundcard, networking and USB.
I think those of us who want ethernet (wifi is fine, but requires way more resources than amigas can offer - get a bridge!), dont plan on having more than just that on the clockport.
Hm... nice bridge (http://www.usinenouvelle.com/industry/labelstandNOK-3979/wl-bridge-oem-ethernet-to-wifi-bridge-access-point-full-module-for-oems-p16766.html)
-
No. They use multiple address spaces at an offset of $4000 for each clockport (base address is 0xd80001, which clashes with some chip area on A4000D/T machines -- peeking and poking in that area on an A4000 machine causes all kinds of havok to the IDE/SCSI port). Programmers that want to support these additional boards need to adapt their drivers for it and detection of multiple clockports that are not mere mirrors of the first one, is not trivial.
Hmm.. that sounds weird.. the official A4000(T) memory map lists $D00000-$D9FFFF as unused.. Maybe there's an address decoding bug somewhere in the IDE/SCSI logic then..
-
(http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh286/mmarks_2008/robocop.jpg)
Haha, I can't help but think of the first Robocop movie when I see that picture :) Thanks for a laugh :)
-
usb ...its fantastic...got a 16gig usb stick ..on the pc just plug it in transfer what u like ..walk to the amiga plug it in transfers have never been so easy ..even better than burning a cd ..i love my clockport now,...