Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: aperez on October 10, 2009, 09:47:30 PM
-
For over a year now, I've been wanting to design and sell an Ethernet card for the Amiga 2000/3000/4000 and 1200. Recently, an Ariadne II card sold on eBay for US $122, and I regularly see them sell for over $75.
The Ariadne II card is quite basic, and uses a bog-standard QFP100 Realtek RTL8019AS with a PLD for glue logic interfacing to the Zorro bus.
If there were interest in 25-50 of them, I would genuinely be motivated to work on a new clone based on the RTL8019 or possibly the RTL8029. Since there's already a SANA II driver, I would not need to write a new driver for it, thus significantly accelerating development time. I'd also like to get it to be usable via the A1200 clockport, so you wouldn't necessarily have to tie up the PCMCIA port (a pain in an A1200 tower) or could use other peripheral cards, such as SCSI II.
What do you all think? The target price would be under $75, with Zorro cards to be produced first, since there's the least amount of choice/viable options here.
http://www.nightfallcrew.com/?p=1218 and http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/search.pl?product=ariadne#ariadne2 for more info/photos.
-
Interesting, it all depends of course on the estimated final price and the real performance (kb/s) one could get.
If both aspects are well carried out, then you have aproduct! Count me in.
Good Luck
-
Ethernet for the clockport would be excellent, it's something I've wanted ever since the "discovery" of the clockport :)
-
I think you would be able to sell 25 cards on ebay for 75 dollar each, no problems.
-
Id buy a zorro or clockport base ethernet card but 75$ is waaay too much. Call me tight but I begrudge paying over the odds in Amiga land, weve all gotta live in the real world folks and eating food comes before anything remotley Amiga ;)
-
I think it's only worth it if you can keep the price absurdly low, because for not much more money you can go Deneb + Ethernet dongle.
-
I too would be interested but it would depend on the final price.
-
Theres already a clockport NIC...RRNet...someone has written a driver already but isn't 100% finished due to broken amiga and lack of motivation...
-
I would be interested in A Zorro card, specially if you could get the price down to $50 or $60. I can likely live with $75 if it must be.
-
*nod* $50 would be ideal, truly. $60 is probably an achievable goal. The price comes down the more PCBs I opt to crank out, hence the open question here about what people think about the prospect. The component costs are more or less fixed.
-
Theres already a clockport NIC...RRNet...someone has written a driver already but isn't 100% finished due to broken amiga and lack of motivation...
@DJBase: I've known about the RR-Net "port" to Amiga for some time, but the reality is there's no fully-functional driver, which makes it of zero use *in practice* to those who might otherwise actually consider it.
-
I think it's only worth it if you can keep the price absurdly low, because for not much more money you can go Deneb + Ethernet dongle.
I hear what you're saying, but honestly $75 is a long way from $200+$15 USB dongle of questionable compatiblity. I'd like to make two versions, one with some sort of IDE-bootable interface ala buddha on-board, and one that's ethernet-only.
-
Ooh, I'd absolutely love a Clockport Ethernet card for my A1200 and A600 so I can go online with a full 8MB Fast RAM :)
-
Ace idea. You should have no trouble selling the boards.
-
Why not use the RTL8139 and make the first 100 Mbit Amiga Zorro card? There is an 8139 OpenPCI driver that could be modified.
-
Would it be hard to make it SATA instead of old IDE?
If you make it SATA, it would be the very first SATA controller for classic Amiga :)
-
@matthey: did you get it working? 8139 with openpci driver? i cant seem to.
-
No, I never tried it with my Mediator which has a driver that works. It needs some memory to dma into so it uses the gfx card memory. I don't know how the OpenPCI driver handles this or if it's an issue on other PCI busboards. I assumed the OpenPCI driver works on something.
-
A 100Mbit ZIII nic with a SATA/IDE controler would rule but will it have Zorro DMA ?
-
A 100Mbit ZIII nic with a SATA/IDE controler would rule but will it have Zorro DMA ?
And fluffy bunnies?
-
for $75 i would buy one for my A2000 even if i dont really need one, but then i expect the shipping to be free :)
If i really needed another network card i could even pay the shipping and maybe some more so the target price is very close to my what i could pay
-
Interested and sure that more than 5 personal Brazilian friends will buy one too. :)
-
I'd go for a sub-$75 one even though I've already got 3 Amigas on the network.
-
If you could really get them working for $75 a piece you'd get a truckload of orders....
There is a reason why Amiga expansion cards are so expensive, though - it's not greed, it's economies of scale. And the fact that we don't have any!
-
I personally would be pretty happy if along with the NIC there was an option for a little board to plug into the side of an A500, with the whole thing horizontal (custom cases, woohoo.) Might sell a couple extra, who knows how many A500 owners want a taste of Ethernet. That's one system that has about no network cards available for it. I want iBrowse on my 500+.
-
A 100Mbit ZIII nic with a SATA/IDE controler would rule but will it have Zorro DMA ?
You could sell a shedload of those...
-
@tone007
Another one for A500.
Getting fully functional NIC for A500 would be the ultimate achievement, since A500 doesn't have spare CPU bandwidth or efficient bus arbitration. I have tried Subway with Ethernet dongle via A500 clockport and that's really a pain.
Hope this works out...
-
A 100Mbit ZIII nic with a SATA/IDE controler would rule but will it have Zorro DMA ?
There was one. A prototype right before DENEB development started.
It's called "RAPTOR", carries one 100MBit NIC (working driver available), one parallel port (for free inside the NIC), one clockport, and one ATA port which also had a Compact Flash card connector on the board.
Ah, yes, and 2MB of FlashROM, not to forget.
Zorro DMA was foreseen, but not implemented due to complications (I used a big CPLD for logic, which is not enough for a nice, clean Zorro III DMA machine with all workarounds).
I gave it up due to cost reasons (even with two layer PCB), as the components are much more expensive than the ones used on DENEB if compared to the possibilities given by both cards. The DENEB is much more versatile.
About SATA: SATA controller chips are usually only PCI based. And they need DMA to operate. So all Zorro II machines are out, all A4000T machines, all A4000 machines with Buster 9 and one DMA Zorro III card, and all A4000x with Buster 11.
And no, I won't sell it ;-)
Michael
-
Well, it's too easy to fall into feature crawl and overengineering, and then things are delayed, get expensive etc. :)
So, proper clockport NIC, is it possible?
There is already clockport adapter for A500 and A600 available, but none for CD32. How about CDTV and A1000? The goal is ofcourse to have ethernet option for all Amigas, for tcp/ip, envoy or whatever.
-
So, proper clockport NIC, is it possible?
I'm working on one right now, actually.
-
Well, it's too easy to fall into feature crawl and overengineering, and then things are delayed, get expensive etc. :)
It was not overengineering, but not knowing exactly how complicated Zorro III DMA can get if you want to workaround everthing.
From a certain point in time on it was clear that more flexible logic and internal memory was needed, so the CPLD solution was simply not fitting any more.
So, proper clockport NIC, is it possible?
Possible - yes. Nowadays there are plenty of NICs availablem, some with more intelligence, some with less.
Depends on how many interested people are there, and especially who can do driver programming.
It is really hard to estimate on how many modules one can sell, and if the amount of time, work and money put in will ever pay.
Michael
-
Hi Michael,
(OT I know, but) has there been any progress on the Prometheus firmware update?
Last time I knew (which was around a year ago, and I've missed a lot since then) it was finished, but still some work to do on archives & installers.
I've looked on your website, but couldn't find any news.
Best Regards
Rich
-
It was not overengineering, but not knowing exactly how complicated Zorro III DMA can get if you want to workaround everthing.
Oh, my comment was not aimed at you, just a generel observation, sorry :)
-
I'm working on one right now, actually.
Very cool! As on open design, or with the goal of having a product to sell? Or perhaps both? :D
-
Why stick at just ZIII DMA, let's make the impossible and make it ZIII DMA with burst mode.
Just kidding...:)
@mboehmer_e3b
"So all Zorro II machines are out, all A4000T machines, all A4000 machines with Buster 9 and one DMA Zorro III card, and all A4000x with Buster 11."
Wasn't it you that said it was only Buster11 mahchines with already a ZIII DMA card that were ruled out ?
The 4000T's internal SCSI controler can be disabled...
-
Maybe instead of re-inventing the wheel, someone should try and finish up the driver(s) for the RR-Net? It would be funny to have a RR-Net hanging off my X-Surf :P
-
Nowadays there are plenty of NICs availablem, some with more intelligence, some with less.
Depends on how many interested people are there, and especially who can do driver programming.
Are there NICs available? Yes. Are they overpriced? Absolutely. Zorro NICs are routinely selling for well over $100-$150 USD and there are *not* functioning Ethernet options for the A500 or A1000.
Agreed, but I am not subject to the regulartory issues you are in Germany, and this is why these sorts of projects are better suited to being open, given the age of the platform. Cheap runs are still viable.
-
About SATA: SATA controller chips are usually only PCI based. And they need DMA to operate. So all Zorro II machines are out, all A4000T machines, all A4000 machines with Buster 9 and one DMA Zorro III card, and all A4000x with Buster 11.
So pretty soon we are all screwed!!
Someone will make it work... hopefully!!
-
The obvious solution is to bring native, non-bridged PCI to the Amiga. Zorro is dead, and ZIII-capable Super Busters cost upwards of $40.
-
@aperez
And where do you want to connect those PCI-slots to if not Zorro ?
The A3/4000 CPU-slot ? Hard to find parts mechanical nightmare (asyou ould have to provide ways to connect an accel and place the PCI-cards in a sensible way.
A1200 Trapdoor ? Same as above plus being limited to 24Bit address-space.
Directly under the CPU ? Might work for a one-off prototyp ....
The BV/CV-PPC slots on the Phase5 cards ? Guess what someone allready thought of that.
-
I'm well aware of the limitations you've outlined, and I think the best way to work around the challenges they present is to do it *where the bus arbitration actually happens* eg, Super Buster. You've got a standard 84-pin PLCC socket to work with. 84-pin, 5V high-density CPLDs are *much* cheaper and easier to obtain. The basic logic needed to bring the machine into a booted/usable state can be captured with the logic analyzer I already possess.
-
@aperez
Are you working on a replacement Buster with PCI expansion using CPLDs? I wondered why CPLDs or FPGAs had not been used for such an expansion/Buster replacement already. I was thinking of a small riser board above the Buster with a cable running to the PCI expansion slots. If you drop a CPLD in the Buster socket, maybe you are thinking of still plugging into the Zorro slots like the Mediator or Prometheus?
-
$75 for a zorro ethernet card? I'd buy one.
-
Maybe instead of re-inventing the wheel, someone should try and finish up the driver(s) for the RR-Net? It would be funny to have a RR-Net hanging off my X-Surf :P
Pan,
There's nothing to "finish" since this oft-spoken-of driver is not available in any form, much less source. What would you propose I do about that?
The CS8900A which the RR-Net is based on is available on a DIP-socketed proto board from people like SparkFun for $35:
Additionally, the CS8900A in the RR-Net is used in 8-bit mode, which Jens himself has stated does not allow the use of interrupts: "The chip is used in 8-bit mode, so the 8 registers of an NE2000 are spread over 16 registers in an 8-bit system. The 8-bit mode of the chip does not support IRQs (see Cirrus logic application note AN181)."
That said, the chip itself does support interrupt-mode, and Jens' documentation states that "Although the Amiga makes the interrupt status queue registers available, it does not have any effect. Even if you try to activate the chip's IRQ features, it will not have any effect. The IRQ line of the chip is not wired on RR-Net at all!" but the pin for it is not passed through on the overpriced RR-Net.
And, taken directly from the Cirrus Logic Application Note itself:
"Unsupported functions in 8 bit mode:
* Interrupts are not supported. Polled mode must be used
* The DMA engine only uses 16-bit memory accesses and does not support 8 bit transfers.
* The packet page pointer has an auto increment feature that cannot be used in 8-bit mode
* An EEPROM is not supported"
Citations:
http://www.cirrus.com/jp/pubs/appNote/an181.pdf
From: http://www.schoenfeld.de/inside/Inside_RRnet.txt
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=200