Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: k4lmp on June 18, 2012, 10:14:06 PM
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Does anybody know if the Amiga is capable of doing TCP/IP over serial? I know it might be only slightly, if any faster than a dial-up connection, but is it doable. I have read about using a C64 user port and connecting to a serial port on a PC, and running a server application that converts the TCP/IP and sends it over the serial connection. I am just wondering if I could do this with my A2000. There is an ethernet card on Ebay, but, it is very expensive. This would also give me another thing to mess around with :) , and if doable, another option for everyone without buying a high dollar ethernet card.
Thanks,
Jeff
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Does anybody know if the Amiga is capable of doing TCP/IP over serial? I know it might be only slightly, if any faster than a dial-up connection, but is it doable. I have read about using a C64 user port and connecting to a serial port on a PC, and running a server application that converts the TCP/IP and sends it over the serial connection. I am just wondering if I could do this with my A2000. There is an ethernet card on Ebay, but, it is very expensive. This would also give me another thing to mess around with :) , and if doable, another option for everyone without buying a high dollar ethernet card.
Thanks,
Jeff
Sure is...
You just need MiamiDX or AmiTcp with Miami's PPP device. You can get those off Aminet i believe.
I was trying to do just that with a serial bluetooth adapter on a 68000 Minimig (so I was using Amitcp because Miami needs 020+) and never got it to work because I was using windows as the PPP server, or 115200 was just too fast ... gave up one day...
this thread is where i left off...
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?p=674035#post674035
I was using Dial-up on my A1200's back in the day :) so 100% possible.
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I could never get this working with Windows. I've heard of people getting it working with Linux as the server however. Good luck.
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I could never get this working with Windows. I've heard of people getting it working with Linux as the server however. Good luck.
I did get it working with Windows NT a LONG time ago. I'll be damned if I can remember how I did it, but I know I used Routing and Remote Access Services (RRAS.) This is available in XP/Vista/7 and it can be configured for remote access. Worth a shot, I guess.
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You can use a Palm Ethernet cradle adapter. It has a PPP server in the device. The palm connector is serial. I forget which model cradle but when I have a chance I will look at mine and see which it is.
Here is the palm cradle pinout.
------ ----- -----
pin 1 DE9.4, DB25.20 PC DTR -> Minstrel DSR
pin 2 N/C Short to Pin 1
pin 3 DE9.2, DB25.3 Minstrel TxD <- PC RxD
pin 4 DE9.7, DB25.4 Minstrel CTS -> PC RTS
pin 5 DE9.3, DB25.2 Minstrel Rxd -> PC TxD
pin 6 DE9.8, DB25.5 Minstrel RTS <- PC CTS
pin 7 N/C GPIO input pin for detecting hotsync, contacts
with pin 2 when the hotsync button is pressed.
pin 8 N/C GPIO (input only, not connected in cable)
pin 9 N/C N/C (spare?)
pin 10 DE9.5, DB25.7 Signal Ground
N/C DE9.4, DB25.20 (PC DSR not connected to PalmPilot)
N/C DE9.1, DB25.8 (PC DCD unconnected to PalmPilot)
Taken from http://pages.swcp.com/~hudson/pilot/minstrel.html
Also someone getting WINGS on C64 working with it.
http://members.shaw.ca/cue64/palmcradle.html
Then on the cradle all you have is Ethernet to the network and PPP on your amiga serial port. If I find mine I will sell it to you if you want it.
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Does anybody know if the Amiga is capable of doing TCP/IP over serial? I know it might be only slightly, if any faster than a dial-up connection, but is it doable. I have read about using a C64 user port and connecting to a serial port on a PC, and running a server application that converts the TCP/IP and sends it over the serial connection. I am just wondering if I could do this with my A2000. There is an ethernet card on Ebay, but, it is very expensive. This would also give me another thing to mess around with :) , and if doable, another option for everyone without buying a high dollar ethernet card.
Thanks,
Jeff
I have one of these: http://www.retroswitch.com/products/flyer/
This gives my C64 full net access via serial for IRC & Telnet (also acts as a virtual 1541 disk drive) - would be great if one could be made for Miggy's! :)
I've Asked Brandon if he could make a Parallel version for the Amiga but haven't heard back from him yet. :cool:
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I did get it working with Windows NT a LONG time ago. I'll be damned if I can remember how I did it, but I know I used Routing and Remote Access Services (RRAS.) This is available in XP/Vista/7 and it can be configured for remote access. Worth a shot, I guess.
I did it long ago by modifying this: http://bwinton.latte.ca/Palm/ppp.html
but can't remember the details. its probably better to use Linux.
also, I had managed to find some sort of Internet hub/switch that has RS232 ports and Ethernet too. it was meant to be used the other way (sharing Internet modem connection to computers on LAN) but can work this way too.
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also, I had managed to find some sort of Internet hub/switch that has RS232 ports and Ethernet too. it was meant to be used the other way (sharing Internet modem connection to computers on LAN) but can work this way too.
PortMasters. We had a few of those connected to 28.8k modems at the ISP where I used to work. Fortunately, we had gone to PRIs before I came on-board, so these were phasing out completely.
The TI forum at AtariAge was recently discussing EIA-232 TCP/IP adapters. Can't remember off the top of my head what they were, but I recall them not being cheap. Think someone's running a BBS on one.
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It's easy to get it working if you have Miami(DX) and a linux box.
use the built in serial (PPP/CSLIP) driver in miami (or some other faster alternative like 8n1.device ) and in the modem tab choose "null modem" . The rest of the options can work with the defaults? i have no amiga here atm.
enable ip forwarding & masquerade on the linux side and issue the command:
"/usr/sbin/pppd /dev/ttyS1 38400 noauth local passive proxyarp asyncmap 0 silent persist 192.168.100.1:192.168.100.2 " remember to have the same serial speed on both the amiga and pc, 38400 works on my A2000 with A2630 @ 25Mhz
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I have one of these: http://www.retroswitch.com/products/flyer/
This gives my C64 full net access via serial for IRC & Telnet (also acts as a virtual 1541 disk drive) - would be great if one could be made for Miggy's! :)
I've Asked Brandon if he could make a Parallel version for the Amiga but haven't heard back from him yet. :cool:
I hang in a channel with the guys who make these. they dont seem to have much interest in amiga anything.. seem quite short sighted. but it would be incredibly slow.
some of you might try the lantronix UDS-10, UDS-100 etc, they connect to serial and give ethernet.
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I hang in a channel with the guys who make these. they dont seem to have much interest in amiga anything.. seem quite short sighted. but it would be incredibly slow.
some of you might try the lantronix UDS-10, UDS-100 etc, they connect to serial and give ethernet.
Have you tried the lantronix stuff? Seems promising; they even have a serial to wifi option.
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Have you tried the lantronix stuff? Seems promising; they even have a serial to wifi option.
looks like the UDS1100 has replaced the 10 & 100 models but at $149 USD it isnt cheap! :(
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Anybody know of a good serial driver to replace serial.device to speed up the serial port? Mine instead of the next step above 19,200 being 38,400, it is 31, some odd number. and that is it. If there is a better one, can I rename the file serial.device?
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Anybody know of a good serial driver to replace serial.device to speed up the serial port? Mine instead of the next step above 19,200 being 38,400, it is 31, some odd number. and that is it. If there is a better one, can I rename the file serial.device?
I got good results using artser.device and BaudBandit.device. See here. (http://files.nettally.com/amiga/) Available on AmiNet, too, I believe.
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Anybody know of a good serial driver to replace serial.device to speed up the serial port?
http://aminet.net/package/comm/misc/8n1
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Anybody know of a good serial driver to replace serial.device to speed up the serial port? Mine instead of the next step above 19,200 being 38,400, it is 31, some odd number. and that is it. If there is a better one, can I rename the file serial.device?
Don't bother, seriously. The known speed problem (or rather the problem of transmission reliability at high serial link speeds) will not go away by dropping in a different device driver.
The root of the problem is in the limitations of the serial port hardware of the Amiga. Reports of getting better performance out of it through custom drivers are, unfortunately, more magical thinking than reliable behaviour.
Save yourself the trouble. If you badly need a serial link which provides for more reliable performance at high speeds and goes easy on the CPU load, you would be best advised to look for a Zorro II multiport serial card. Provided you can get a hold of one of these, the results will be much better than what the built-in Amiga serial hardware can even hope to deliver.
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The root of the problem is in the limitations of the serial port hardware of the Amiga. Reports of getting better performance out of it through custom drivers are, unfortunately, more magical thinking than reliable behaviour.
I'll have to call shenanigans on this. I experienced measurably better performance out of particular serial drivers. Without looking at my old Miami config file I cannot recall off the top of my head which one, but I was able to get stable and reliable performance with a 56k modem on one of the alternate serial.device drivers whereas I could not with others.
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A 060 processor and RTG card did allow quite reliable 56k even on my A500 and std device.
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I'll have to call shenanigans on this. I experienced measurably better performance out of particular serial drivers. Without looking at my old Miami config file I cannot recall off the top of my head which one, but I was able to get stable and reliable performance with a 56k modem on one of the alternate serial.device drivers whereas I could not with others.
Lucky you ;)
Back in the day I toyed with the idea of rewriting the serial.device driver in plain 'C' just to prove that it can be done. As part of this exercise, I reviewed the original serial.device source code which, strangely enough, wasn't poorly written at all.
If you properly did your job in the network front-end (slip.device, cslip.device, ppp.device) which called upon the serial driver to move its data around, and enabled the recommended control options (8N1, RTS/CTS, high-speed mode) you enabled a code path through the serial.device RBF interrupt handler which was as short as it could be. From what I know, your typical custom serial.device variant reproduced exactly this code path, and removed every other optional code path which the original serial.device had to support (7E1, xON/xOFF, etc.).
The big problem remained, no matter what device driver you put your trust in: the receive buffer of the built-in serial hardware has just enough room for one word to be stored at a time. Once the receive buffer is full, the hardware triggers an interrupt and your interrupt handler has to be fast and lucky to pick it up before the next incoming word overwrites it. This works reasonably well for transmission speeds up to 57.600 bps (assuming fair weather), but gets flakier the more you demand of the hardware.
If your display mode (e.g. 16 colour hires interlaced) puts extra load on the bus, you'll make it harder for the rbf interrupt to be serviced quickly. If you write to disk, hit the keyboard, etc. you're asking more interrupts to be serviced while the serial rbf interrupt also has to have its day. If you run more programs in the background, same effect.
It's easy to throw off the serial receiver because it's so easy to trip it up at high speeds: incoming words are getting more likely to be trashed because there is basically no safety buffer to avoid exactly that. There is very, very little which your serial.device driver replica can do to alleviate the situation.
What works consistently well, and very well indeed is to use serial device hardware which has a FIFO, and which can be found on any Amiga serial card made since the early days.
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On the other hand, the speed of the serial port for data transfers is not really interesting at all. Lets look at the numbers:
The newest Amiga Zorro serial cards like Hypercom, VarIO, etc can reach 46KB/s, some of them can exceptionally reach 62KB/s
The vast majority of Amiga Zorro serial cards like the Vector Connection, IOBlix, etc can reach 11.5 KB/s
The low end Amiga Zorro serial cards like Multiface, GVP IOExtender, etc will never achieve anything beyond 6.1KB/s
Clockport based serial cards can reach speeds resembling those of the high end Zorro serial cards.
I know numbers are a bit dissapointing.
The parallel port is often faster, and even more in some expansion cards (500KB/s), it is in some aspects a better choice than the serial port. It can be used thru a PLIP driver for TCP-IP connections.
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I got this response from Brandon (maker of the c64 flyer) regarding a version for Amiga's:
I've definitely thought about it :) The "problem" is that Amiga peripherals don't have the same intelligent / high-level interfaces that the Commodore 8-bit machines do, so it wouldn't be a plug-and-play solution like the Flyer. I would have to write device drivers and/or additional software on the Amiga to make something like the Flyer work.
This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing (and it would be a really fun project), but it would take much more than some hardware modifications and I don't have the spare cycles currently.
I love the Amiga, and I'd definitely like to do something with it at some point!
Brandon