Additional clockports for the A1200 ?

[Doobrey]

You mean you have the rightmost 22pins on P9B ?
That is the clockport, all other pins were left over from the days when CBM were gonna make the A1200 with 1MB RAM, and sell an extra 1MB module that plugged into the P9A&B connectors.
 When they decided to make the A1200 a 2Mb machine, they simply didn`t bother soldering the pins to the unused holes to save money.
BTW, I`ve heard that some A1200s were built wrong, and had the 22pins meant for the clockport soldered to the leftmost side of the connector, if your A1200 is like that, dont plug anything into it, you could let out the magic blue smoke.

[Orjan]

Yep, the rightmost ones is the ones I have... I always thought that the clockport consisted of all the pins, so to speak...

[Oli_hd]

Hi,

Take a look at Cirrus Logic, their CS8900 Ethernet chip, will work in an 8 bit ISA type mode. See AN181 'Using the CS8900A in 8 bit mode.'

 :-P  :-)
(PS: Prototype, not tested, probably wont work.)

[Doobrey]

Hi Oli..
 Have you seen this ??

More details from their site www.embeddedether.net

Looks like it only needs Reset,AEN,and INTR inverted ..er and the small matter of a driver.At $49, it`s gonna be cheaper than getting my own PCB and the time spent burning my fingers.
 BTW, I seem to remember Jens Schoenfeld saying something about the interrupt line on the CS8900 not working when 8 bit mode, so the driver would have to do polling :-(

Also, www.edtp.com do a nice line in embedded network stuff, both kits and assembled.

[Doobrey]

Dunno if anyone is actually interested in a clockport network card,
 But there`s also this..

Apart from the layout, it looks pretty much the same as the one above except it costs $70..from www.embeddedethernet.com
Again..roll yer own drivers..

[Brian]

I talked to Jens and he mentioned that his Ethernet module for the C64 uses a standard clockport connector (ofcause it's Jens we're talking about) to connect to the RR and it would work with the Amiga clockport if only there was drivers. However it would meen about an 80% CPU hogg and a silly low speed of something like 100Kbit.

[Methanoid]

Oh I think there IS a market for Clockport network cards... think of all those poor people who dont want t0o have PCMCIA cards hanging out their machines or buy Powers £20 rightangle adaptors for tower use!!!

[Robert17]

If there was a clockport network card, I'd buy one, as I plan to use my pcmcia port for a cdrom...

Robert

[Doobrey]

Methanoid wrote:
think of all those poor people who dont want t0o have PCMCIA cards hanging out their machines or buy Powers £20 rightangle adaptors for tower use!!!

Even with a right angle adapter, I had problems with my network card. The dongle cable was so stiff, it couldn`t bend out the way of the case without creating a bad connection on the network card!
 I ended up removing the PCMCIA port, and soldering a short length of SCSI ribbon (68w IDC, just right!)between the motherboard and the now loose PCMCIA socket. :-o
 That way, I could move the network card to the bottom of the case and not have to worry about jiggling the dongle to get a connection!

[Stedy]

Has anyone here (apart from E3B or Individual Designs) ever built and tested their own clockport card?

I've designed a serial card and such but as I am now an ex-Amiga user, it will not get built.

[Doobrey]

Not yet..fingers crossed,very soon though.
 I`ve got a couple of things ready to go to the PCB makers, and the software`s almost done for one of them.
 Just waiting until I`ve finalised the design of another project, then I`ll be getting all the PCBs made at once to save some of money.

[Methanoid]

Come on Doob, share with us  :-o

[Doobrey]

Nothing that special Meth,
 The MP3 player is almost there, the chips finally arrived the other week after a world shortage, doing the stripboard version at the moment.
 The flashrom gizmo is just waiting for me to get the software finished, got a stripboard version that`s ugly as hell, but seems functional.
 Apart from that, everything else is nothing more than untested schematics or ideas.. RDS radio module for the mp3 player, probably with a controllable mixer too, Colour LCD display for the player, network card, serial card with one rs232 port, and one irda port..

But with work, life etc ,things get done when I have the time and enthusiasm (and money!) for them.

[Methanoid]

Might be a silly question but how will we will run this and a network adaptor off clockport? Are there such things as working "clockport doublers"

[jj]

CD32Freak wrote:
[idiot-mode]
The A1200 revision 1A has two clockports and the extra port is located at P9A near the keyboard connector on the right
[/idiot-mode]
:lol:
Post Edited, see below :-D

Wow, do u know ive never noticed this, ive got a 1A mobo( lucky aint i, had it from new) and i know its got the one clock port, but didnt know about the secon one by  the keyboard connector will have to check that out

[Doobrey]

@JJ, Don`t wanna burst your bubble, but did you read on a few posts after that ??

@Meth, don`t worry..the FlashRom design has a built in splitter.
 BTW, I hope it hasn`t got anyones hopes up, but I won`t be selling anything. I`ll post the PCB designs and any needed software on my site when it`s ready. If a muppet like me can solder, I`m sure others can too :-)
 I was also thinking along the lines of an extended clockport..having a 16bit datapath and maybe an extra address line or two.  
 No use for existing cards, but could be handy for other people designing stuff.
 Any hardware hacker types got any ideas/thoughts about it?