Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: amyren on October 19, 2009, 12:05:09 PM
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I just stumbled upon this device: http://www.connectone.com/products.asp?did=73&pid=85
It is a RS232 serial-to-wifi bridge, claimed to be plug and play for any device.
My thought when I saw this product was if it could be used to connect old computers like the classic amigas to the internet. Just as this was a standard modem - only faster.
But I could not find so much information about the usage of this bridge, so Im not sure if it can act like (emulate) a standard modem, or if there are special drivers needed to get it working.
If someone with a bit more technical knowledge that myself could have a look at it and give some feedback, it would be useful.
Anyone?
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Hmmm.... some strange protocols in use... prob no software for it for the Amiga side.
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Those things are Serial ports for use over WiFi, they just transmit the RS-232 signals from a computer to the WiFi serial port. You would be able to connect the Amiga to a PC via Null-modem but nothing more.
Think of it as a wireless serial cable.
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Those things are Serial ports for use over WiFi, they just transmit the RS-232 signals from a computer to the WiFi serial port. You would be able to connect the Amiga to a PC via Null-modem but nothing more.
Think of it as a wireless serial cable.
The page sez:
Secure iWiFi™ is a serial-to-WiFi device server that enables installed serial devices to connect via their existing serial port to the Internet over an 802.11b/g Wireless LAN.
So it does work over the wireless network but programing it is another thing. Did you look through the docs. to see how to initialize the beast? If it is anything other then a remote login (connect directly to the device via its wifi) then you'd need a PC or something to run what ever sofware is needed to set it up.
Keep us informed cuz this is highly COOL!
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Well, If you can live with wires and wait for me to finish my project, I'm building a serial to ethernet bridge (SLIP to TCP/IP over ethernet).
Yo can see some photos here: http://www.amiga.org/forums/album.php?albumid=54
The goal is to provide a small bridge from the slip side to the ethernet one. It implemented a smart bridge that takes care of the arp tables and packet fragmentation, routing, and other TCP/IP over ethernet related questions.
The hardware part is almost finished. Now, I'm making some hardware tests. Once I finished them, I'll start with the software part.
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If the "SerialNET™ mode for serial-to-IP bridging" is SLIP compatible, this would work to connect the Amiga to WiFi. You'd think they would've just said SLIP though.
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ferix: The serial-to-ethernet project looks interesting. I wonder what you have planned do show in the display.. Are you planning to sell these things when you get it finished, and do you have any hint about the price tag? (or what are the axrox. parts cost if you plan to release it as a DIY project.)
tone007: I just sent an email to the sales department asking about this. If I get a decent reply I'll post it here.
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I'm getting this RSS-22 Bluetooth adapter (http://www.a7eng.com/products/bluetooth/productpages/eb301serialbtadapters.htm) myself to build inside Minimig. I already tried this weekend with a similar external adapter, and it works excellent for running 57600 bps terminal at least. :)
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The page sez:
So it does work over the wireless network but programing it is another thing. Did you look through the docs. to see how to initialize the beast? If it is anything other then a remote login (connect directly to the device via its wifi) then you'd need a PC or something to run what ever sofware is needed to set it up.
Keep us informed cuz this is highly COOL!
Sorry, I've been hanging around /. too long :)
Yes indeed! It will do some protocols and raw sockets, via AT commands, there is a programmers manual under support or here http://www.connectone.com/media/upload/ATi_Programmers_Manual_8_32.pdf
It would probably be enough if someone wrote a TCP/IP Stack for it...
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That's another reason to go for a 1200, $30 got my Miggy connected wireless via a cheap PCMCIA card :)
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A *far* better solution is to add an ethernet port to your Amiga which is relatively easy to do on all models except the A500 and A1000.
For those two models, you can add a Z2 busboard sidecar, and then add a Z2 ethernet card. This is an expensive way to do it, but it works.
Once you have ethernet, then you can add an ethernet -> wifi adapter. Older adapters are dirt cheap on ebay these days. You really only need 802.11b for the older Amigas, since they'd only have a 10Mbit ethernet card anyway. I use an ethernet -> wifi adapter on my A4000 via an old Ariadne 2 card, and it works great.
RS232 is VERY cpu intensive on the internal chipset, not to mention dirt slow -- maxing out at 0.1Mbps.
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A *far* better solution is to add an ethernet port to your Amiga which is relatively easy to do on all models except the A500 and A1000.
For those two models, you can add a Z2 busboard sidecar, and then add a Z2 ethernet card. This is an expensive way to do it, but it works.
As you say, It's expensive...
If you are a DIY man, It's very easy to interface an ISA ethernet card to those amiga models.
The same on PCMCIA. PCMCIA is only an extension to ISA bus. I've connected PCMCIA cards to AVR microcontroles with success.
The problem is always the same... drivers...
I wrote my self lots of network drivers for linux and some microcontrollers, but these have well known (and well documented) apis, or no api at all (like microcontrolers). The amiga's problem is to write a sana2 compliant device driver... As far as I know, ofcourse.
Once you have ethernet, then you can add an ethernet -> wifi adapter. [..]
If you get a fonera, you can hack It to work as ethernet to wifi bridge. And if you build the serial adapter, you can even make your own slip to ethernet or wifi bridge. I made It my self, and It works nice.
The only problem is that linux kernel doesn't manage bridges with diferent MTU sizes. So, yo have to configure the slip interface to a MTU of 1500 bytes to match the ethernet MTU... And It could be a high load for the amiga.
That's not a problem for ethernet to wifi briges. Wifi uses ethernet frames under the link layer, so It uses same MTU size.
You can get a NEW fonera+ for about 30 euros (about $45 or 27 pounds):
https://shop.fon.com/FonShop/shop/ES/ShopController?view=product&product=PRD-018&language=en
Note: My design takes care of it. It automatically fragments incomming packets that exceed the slip MTU size... At least is what I have planned...
RS232 is VERY cpu intensive on the internal chipset, not to mention dirt slow -- maxing out at 0.1Mbps.
Yes, you're right, but It's the cheaper and easier option, I think...
ferix: The serial-to-ethernet project looks interesting. I wonder what you have planned do show in the display.. Are you planning to sell these things when you get it finished, and do you have any hint about the price tag? (or what are the axrox. parts cost if you plan to release it as a DIY project.)
I'm not planning to sell It. Maybe, I'll free the schematics and sources, as soon as I'll have a full working prototype.
I don't know how much I spent on It, because It's almost made with spare and sample parts, but I guess It would cost about 20 euros or so, without the LCD.
The LCD is not necessary at all. I included It for configuration and status information, but you can do the same directly by the serial port.
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Here is some feedback I got from the customer service from ConnectOne.
I also attached the file about how to set it up on windows. It does not seem to require any special drivers to work, and could possibly be set up to work on Amigas as well (?)
Hello,
The Secure iWiFi can be connected to a computer as a NULL modem connection,
and convert the connection to WiFi. The feature to be looking at is the "PPP
Host Interface and Routing" described in the release notes for firmware
version 804b04, found on our website.
I attach explanation on the configuration with Windows XP. In addition to
the document you must set the following commands:
1. AT+irrhw=0 ; Disable readiness pin .
2. AT+iioc:x0xxxxxx ; PIOC01 Signal is Output, default LOW
3. AT+idown ; Invoke software reboot
SLIP is not supported.
Best regards,
Avishay Katz
Field Application Engineer
Connect One
560 S. Winchester Blvd, Suite 500
San Jose, CA 95128
USA
Office: (408) 572-5675
Direct: (408) 857-4006
http://www.connectone.com
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If I understood It well, It emulates a serial port connection over the wifi, and then you need to provide the communication protocol (PPP in that case), but you need a PC as host on one side for acting as a ppp server and for routing...
It's the same as a null modem connection between your amiga and your PC, but without wires... It doesn't connect your amiga to the network (directly).
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If I understood It well, It emulates a serial port connection over the wifi, and then you need to provide the communication protocol (PPP in that case), but you need a PC as host on one side for acting as a ppp server and for routing...
It's the same as a null modem connection between your amiga and your PC, but without wires... It doesn't connect your amiga to the network (directly).
Doesnt a program like MiamiDx enable the Amiga to be set up with PPP and work with this adaptor?
I also remember I used MiamiDx with the nullserdevice to emulate a null-modem connection between the Amiga and (Shapeshifter) MacOS8 in order to provide internet to the Mac side. That is internet via nullmodem from the Amiga, but my hope is that it could work the other way as well.
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Doesnt a program like MiamiDx enable the Amiga to be set up with PPP and work with this adaptor?
I also remember I used MiamiDx with the nullserdevice to emulate a null-modem connection between the Amiga and (Shapeshifter) MacOS8 in order to provide internet to the Mac side. That is internet via nullmodem from the Amiga, but my hope is that it could work the other way as well.
I remember it doing this to, but inever played around with that function... :(
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Miami or Genesis can act as a PPP client, you just need a PPP server on the other end to connect to. Windows can provide this if set up properly.
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Miami or Genesis can act as a PPP client, you just need a PPP server on the other end to connect to. Windows can provide this if set up properly.
I thought that was what the serial-to-wifi device did in this mode, to act as the PPP server and bridge it to the wifi network at the same time
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If you are a DIY man, It's very easy to interface an ISA ethernet card to those amiga models.
The same on PCMCIA. PCMCIA is only an extension to ISA bus. I've connected PCMCIA cards to AVR microcontroles with success.
The problem is always the same... drivers...
I wrote my self lots of network drivers for linux and some microcontrollers, but these have well known (and well documented) apis, or no api at all (like microcontrolers). The amiga's problem is to write a sana2 compliant device driver... As far as I know, ofcourse.
If you can attach a PCMCIA card that already has an Amiga driver, would it not be fairly straightforward to adapt the driver to work with this configuration?
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If you can attach a PCMCIA card that already has an Amiga driver, would it not be fairly straightforward to adapt the driver to work with this configuration?
Hmmm... It depends on how you connect It. If you are able to mimic the gayle's pcmcia interface, yes, you can use standard drivers.
PCMCIA work similar to Amiga's autoconfig.
There are three memory mappings on the PCMCIA bus. The config space, the memory space (up to 16 Mb) and the I/O space (up to 64k I/O).
On power on or reset, you have to read the required resources from the config space, and assign them. This includes the base address of the pcmcia card (within the 16Mb window fot memory and/or 64Kb for I/O) and the interrupts lines.
As you see, It's not an easy task, and there's a lot of ways of doing It.
The easy way is to interface an ISA card...
Recently, I made a linux driver for an ISA based ethernet chip that can be directly connected to the amiga bus. It's very easy to program and interface. It's the DM9000 from Davicom.
It can be connected to 8, 16 or 32 bit buses.
If you want, I can make a basic design for the amiga.
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I thought that was what the serial-to-wifi device did in this mode, to act as the PPP server and bridge it to the wifi network at the same time
How about that, it looks like that's the case. (I didn't read the PDF earlier.)
Pretty handy device.
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Hmmm... It depends on how you connect It. If you are able to mimic the gayle's pcmcia interface, yes, you can use standard drivers.
I was thinking more that the existing drivers could be modified to support your new interface. My Prism-II wireless driver for example is open source, and the code is modular with regard to buses: internally, there are modules for PCMCIA, PCI etc. You would just need to add a small "A500" module; the core wireless chipset driver would stay the same.
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I was thinking more that the existing drivers could be modified to support your new interface. My Prism-II wireless driver for example is open source, and the code is modular with regard to buses: internally, there are modules for PCMCIA, PCI etc. You would just need to add a small "A500" module; the core wireless chipset driver would stay the same.
In such case, yes, It can be done. But you need to rewrite the driver, you can't use the "plain" driver you use on A600 or A1200.
As I said, the real problem is to write the driver, not the hardware.
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A picture from the product brief.
I think that it could work, but software had to be written. But perhaps that it's not worth it considering the cost of the device, effort to make software and speed it would yield...
But if there was a parallell device? :-)
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A picture from the product brief.
I think that it could work, but software had to be written. But perhaps that it's not worth it considering the cost of the device, effort to make software and speed it would yield...
But if there was a parallell device? :-)
As discussed earlier in the thread, it apears that the device act as PPP server. So for the Amiga, this should behave like a generic phone modem and should work without any particular software. (apart from the dialup/tcpip program like Miami or similar). It might need a init script to make sure the device is set to operate in the wanted mode though.
A paralell device could probably operate with greater speed, but then you will need the software written for it anyway.
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I had some pointers on getting an A600/A1200 online for next to nothing. I know some people would like this serial solution for An A500-type machine, but the load on the CPU and the max. speed of the com port would make it impossibly slow. For A500's and the like, sourcing one of those few network cards that were available would probably be a better choice. For big box machines, the options are greater still.
My guide: http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=26191&forum=25