Interesting Article about cheap ethernet.

[TechWolf]

Hi,

I'm the author of the Blacklisted article about the palm cradle and the person who did the initial software testing of it on the c64.  Originally, it was designed as a cheap way to get ethernet on the 64 that was readily available.  During testing, it made sense that the palm cradle could pretty much be used on anything that had a serial port and a tcp/ip stack, and so it might have a broader range of interest/usefullness than just the C64 scene.  

Yes, it may be slow, but it'll allow me to test my '020 A2000 on my home network without having to resort to using dialup.  That is, until I can find/afford a "real" Amiga ethernet solution.

If anyone has any questions/flames/suggestions/etc. please feel free to contact me.

TW

[TechWolf]

Gojirax said:

Do you have a link to the actual article? I clicked the Ebay link but it said the auction has ended.

Unfortunately, no -- I used to have the information online, but it was removed when I wrote the article and Blacklisted published it.  However, the issue with the article is still on the shelves and can be purchased.  Otherwise, once the article is no longer in the "current" issue, I may go back and put the information back online -- seeing as how I wasn't paid for the article, I don't think there's any problems with me retaining the rights to publish elsewhere.

JJ said:

Does this thing basically just use slip then.

Did something like this years back I think. Connect your amiga to a pee cee with a null modem cable. And then set miami up to use a null modem driver or aomething

can temeber the exact details. But with hypercomm used to get decent internet sharing back in the 56k days

Actually, it uses real PPP connections.  It's wired for a straight-though serial connection (no null-modem necessary). I was using it at 19200 on my C64.  I believe iirc that it can communicate as high as 57600.  There are some limitations, obviously with speed, and certain ports being locked out (no running servers with this thing) but for someone who wants a cheap way to be able to plug into an rj45 home network and do web browsing and the like, it should be just fine.  But again, at this point, it's all theoretical, as I have to set everything up and actually try it with the amiga.

TW

[TechWolf]

Tonight, I successfully tested the palm cradle with my '020 Amiga 2000 running OS 3.1, Miami TCP/IP (evaluation version) and Ibrowse 1.0.  

It looks like the stock amiga serial port will handle no more than 19200.  In miami, I deleted all the "modem init/dial strings" because the cradle just ignores those.  In fact, if you don't delete the init string, Miami seems to choke because it expects to see a response from it.  

However, if you delete all the modem strings, it seems to work.  I get a couple error messages, one about not being able to get an IP address (the cradle already -has- the IP address assigned to it) and something about PPP LCP, but if you hit the cancel button, it continues and goes online.  

Once the tcp/ip stack is running, I figure just about any amiga software should work.  As I said, I tested it with ibrowse 1.0 (I had the disk handy) and loaded up Google, The Straight Dope Message board, etc.  I also took a couple pictures.   I'm going to try out some other apps, like an IRC client and the like.

TW