Stock A1200 networking

[alexatkin]

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone knows a nice way to network a stock A1200 to Windows/Linux for transferring ADF files onto floppy?

I havent used the A1200 in a few years but I finally have enough space to set it up again and so fancied transferring stuff over from WinUAE as the games play better on the real thing.  I remember last time it was a PITA using PC2AMIGA as it would constantly crash the Amiga so seeing mentions of people using NE2000 compatible PCMCIA cards and even mention that PRISM PCMCIA cards might work I figured id ask around.

I tried a PCMCIA card once but figured it wasnt possible due to the reset problem on A600/A1200 PCMCIA ports.  Is this still true or is there a workaround that doesnt involve soldering?  Ideally id like to get one of my PRISM2 cards working (I have an unencrypted WiFi network I could use), otherwise wired LAN would be fine.  ANYTHING is better than PC2AMIGA.  However I know nothing about Amiga networking (though im savvy with Windows and Linux networking) as I wasnt even sure it was possible on a stock A1200.

[alexatkin]

Thanks for all the information, looks fairly straightforward as soon as I can remember where I left the A1200 LOL. (how can you lose something that big?)
 
Might try it on the A600 first as I know where that is, although it doesnt have a hard drive at the moment so that makes things harder it DOES at least have the 1MB RAM upgrade.

I gotta admit I didnt know half as much about Linux when I tried doing this last time and WiFi wasnt even on the market yet.  So hopefully it will be a lot more obvious this time around.  Its amazing that the Amiga community is still around and actually made a software fix for the reset bug, im pretty sure that didnt exist last time I tried either.

[alexatkin]

Well my biggest hurdle so far isnt not finding the A1200 (because at least I have the A600) or putting a hard drive in the A600 (because I have a few lying around I could use), its finding the PSU.  LOL

Its another thing that should be too large to lose but I changed rooms earlier this year and loads of stuff ended up in boxes and have pretty much stayed there.  I also had no plans to setup the Amiga again so I didnt keep everything where I could lay my hands on it quickly.

Thanks for all the tips though, im sure once I get the thing powered up it will be a lot easier to configure than finding the PSU, mouse and joystick/pad were.  

Speaking of mice, are those little apps that let you use serial mice any good?  I think theres one or two on Aminet.

I still really wish I could have gotten hold of an A4000 though.  If I had one of those I would never have had to pack it away in the first place.  Its just these old computer with integral keyboard systems take up FAR too much space when not in use.  Thank goodness I dont have my Atari ST anymore, those suckers were HUGE and a lot easier to emulate too!

Oh dear, nostalgia is kicking in.  I better fire up the emulators while im looking for the PSU etc.  :-D

[alexatkin]

OK.

Found the PSU, found a 2GB HD and managed to struggle transferring the WB3.1 disk images across by lha'ing the little buggers onto PC DD floppies.  Im glad THATS over with I have them back on floppy again.  Like a fool I lent most of my Amiga floppies to a friend last month thinking I wouldnt be neeeding them though that was partly because I knew the important stuff I had in ADF on the PC.

Anyway, got the HD formatted and 3.1 installed.  Installed the prism2 device. Followed the instructions on installing AmiTCP 3. Installed CardPatch and CardReset in user-startup before AmiTCP fires up and - its not picking up the prism2 card.  At least it seems thats the problem as im just getting "no such interface".

Unfortunately the only WIRED LAN PCMCIA card I have
a) I do not know where it is
b) the dongle is broken so its almost impossible to get it to work

Is there any way to check if prism2.device is actually doing anything?  Anything to probe if the 1200 is even detecting a card in the PCMCIA slot?  The card does seem to be getting warm so at least that would imply its getting power.

At least AmiTCP IS working on some level, I can ping loopback without any problems.

[alexatkin]

Yup, the relevant line in interfaces is:

wlan dev=devs:networks/prism2.device

and in startnet its:

AmiTCP:bin/ifconfig wlan0 192.168.1.20 netmask 255.255.255.0

I checked the path, the file is there in devs:networks/prism2.device.  I checked ifconfig wlan0 and "no such interface".

Interestingly I discovered that cnetdevice contains a card_info app. I tried that which reported that my PCMCIA card is a Belkin 11Mbps Wireless Notebook Network Adapter and that it appears to be a network card.  I must also note that this same card has been used with prism2 drivers both under Linux and Windows so theres no doubt about it being a prism2.

[alexatkin]

Sanautil, thanks for the tip.  Well, at least it IS seeing the card but shouldnt it have found the access point and be transmitting/receiving to that?

Device 'networks/prism2.device' (version 1.6), unit 0
QueryFormat: 0, DeviceLevel: 0
Address field size: 48 bits, Maximum transfer unit: 1500 bytes
Speed: 11000000 bps, HardwareType: Ethernet
Current addr: 00:00:00:00:00:00, Default addr: [HIDDEN]
Packets received: 0, Packets sent: 0
Bad Data: 0, Overruns: 0
Unknown packets received: 0, Reconfigurations: 0
Last start: --
Special stats:
(1/0) Bad multicasts: 0
(1/1) Retries: 0
(1/2) Underruns: 0

I blanked out the default addr just for paranoias sake but it was correct for the card.

Anyway im using the A1200 with the intention I might at least be able to increast the FAST RAM a little at some point, preferably drop an accelerator in at least an 030.  Its not a priority at the moment though, plenty of high-tech stuff I want this christmas.  :roll: The A600 would be more of a problem as im not sure where the hard drive bracket is and id have to use the external floppy as I only have the one internal one that works and its in the A1200.  Not to mention why use the slower machine when some of the games I will be transferring will be AGA. :-P

Being able to get stuff straight off Aminet onto the Amiga and being able to access my PCs DVD-ROM drive though is VERY useful especially as it shouldnt cost me a penny to do.

[alexatkin]

Because it says packets 0 which would implies it hasnt even tried to connect. I DID include "SetPrism2Defaults SSID LCARS" in user-startup just to be sure, it didnt seem to make any difference.  This card is DEINFATELY in the MAC allowed list on the Access Point and works fine in my laptop.  Strangely another prism2 card I have isnt being detected by the A1200 at all, although that one could have developed a fault as part of the card is snapped (but seemingly just one side of the onboard antenna and the leds light up).

It seems to me that prism2.device isnt initialising the card properly. If I do "sanautil device prism2.device online" I get:

OnLine command failed -- Error: Bad state
WireError: Unit is not configured

If I do "sanautil device prism2.device config" and then the above, I get the same error.  If I do "sanautil device prism2.device config address=[the cards mac address]", it still does the same.  Clearly the card ISNT initialising, but im not sure what is failing or what I can do about it.

If it was Linux I would check the syslog but Amiga?  Is there any way to get more debug information out of AmiTCP?

Anothing thing is the Reset patch seems to be working as I tested with it disabled in user-startup and the card didnt fire up until I plugged it in AFTER booting then.  Incidentally, do you need CardPatch AND CardReset?  CardReset mentioned needing CardPatch but it didnt say anything more than that.  I dont think its related to the problem though, I have both listed in user-startup and card is clearly initialising on some level, just not for AmiTCP.

Is it possibly something stupid like I need a newer version of setpatch?  Other libraries AmiTCP depends on?  This IS just a basic WB3.1 install.  I think I might try softbooting kickstart 3.1 and see if it makes any difference, but I will have barely any RAM left then for testing.

[edit] Kickstart 3.1 did not make any difference whatsoever.  :cry:

[alexatkin]

Well, after installing AmiTCP 4 and a little manual configuration, everything is working! :-D So it seems prism2 does not work with AmiTCP 3.  I began to suspect as much especially when ncafferkey posted and I noticed it was an AmiTCP 4 configuration.  Also the fact that the AmiTCP 3 installer doesnt configure things correctly and 3 is a beta, I was just beginning to think (or at least hope) something was wrong with it.

Anyway, now with AmiTCP 4 I got NFS to mount my ADF directory on my Linux server and it worked first time (which for NFS on ANY system is bloody amazing).  Im getting ~96k/sec copying ADF files to the Amiga over NFS, I peaked at 116k/sec over FTP copying a large lha file (averaging about 105k/sec) to my PC using AmiTCPs built-in FTP server, which doesnt seem too shoddy for a stock A1200 especially as these are both hard drive transfers.  RAM disk I suspect will be even faster still.

I am having issues with "RPC call timed out" but I guess its to be expected a stock A1200 is just a tad too slow and NFS is a pain in the arse even on PC.  Unfortunately smbfs just gave me a "software failure" and the main Samba package looks a tad large. I already lost 50% of the RAM on the A1200 from setting up AmiTCP and tidying up the icons a bit, and thats after moving ENV: over to the hard disk (temporary measure I hope until I manage to get some FAST RAM somehow but it saved me about 300k RAM at the cost of some speed).  

Incidentally, I was doing some tests in WinUAE and was wonder exactly what data can FAST RAM contain when you have an accelerator?  The reason I ask is I tested reading a large directory on my PC in WinUAE with emulated 128MB FAST RAM and it couldnt cope as it exhausted all the CHIP RAM.  I presume it was because it was not patched to use the FAST RAM correctly or are there limitations?  I dont think WinUAE emulates accelerators as such so the memory mapping is probably not right?

Anyway, thanks everyone for their help.  I think its absolutely astonishing that a stock A1200 can connect to a wireless network nomatter what speed it does.  It really show the flexibility of the Amiga and the reason we love it so much even now.  It would take a hugely customised Linux-from-scratch build to achieve the same thing on an old PC with even twice as much RAM as the A1200 has and THAT would need an MMU.