Plipbox vs. conventional nic's

[curtis]

Okay, this may be a moot point, but how does the plipbox compare to a more "normal" network interface card?

I know the plipbox is, obviously, much easier to acquire, but how does the throughput speeds compare?

[Matt_H]

I would imagine it's limited to the speed of the parallel port, so slower than a Zorro or PCMCIA card. Chief advantage is that it can be attached to Amigas large and small, so it's an easy way to get a 500 or CDTV on the LAN. Better to have a slow network than no network

[paul1981]

Better to have a slow network than no network

A hacker would agree with you. :laughing:

[curtis]

I would imagine it's limited to the speed of the parallel port, so slower than a Zorro or PCMCIA card. Chief advantage is that it can be attached to Amigas large and small, so it's an easy way to get a 500 or CDTV on the LAN. Better to have a slow network than no network

That's pretty much what I figured.  So all the talk of a plipbox being 10MB is good right up to where it enters the Amiga!

[Pat the Cat]

This talk of "it's as fast as the parallel port it uses" are a bit vague.

While  all "built in parallel" Amiga ports are bits of complex interface  adaptor design, how they are read and written is in part down to which  software driver the pilipbox is using.

I would guess you get about 25KB a second maximum, but that's kilobytes per second. So not too shabby.

The  hardware latches on 8520s will work reliably at 56K, but how close the  various releases of driver have got to that hardware limit, I've never  tested. 1.3 versions of parallel.device were very iffy and clumsy IIRC.  Presumably later ones are faster and more reliable.
 
Some Zorro  cards have much faster parallel ports than the standard, obviously,  which might outshoot the average 10Mb (Megabit) per second Plipbox. That  would to a certain extent still depend on the processor of the Amiga  used. For instance an A2000 is still a 7MHz computer even with a very  fast Plipbox and much faster parallel port.

[darkage]

from a quick read it seems Plipbox will do around 0.2MB/s and Pcmcia has a max throughput of 2.5 MB/s (not sure how fast an actual Pcmcia network card would be in real life)

[PPC]

A500 With a vampire card the plipbox does up to ~130 KB/sec.
A600 with vampire and PCMCIA network card does 1,0 MB/sec easy over my internal network since my 10Mbit card will not go faster then that.

[guest11527]

Some Zorro  cards have much faster parallel ports than the standard, obviously,  which might outshoot the average 10Mb (Megabit) per second Plipbox. That  would to a certain extent still depend on the processor of the Amiga  used. For instance an A2000 is still a 7MHz computer even with a very  fast Plipbox and much faster parallel port.

Unfortunately, most of these cards are based on PC hardware, i.e. standard I/O chips designed for the PC. This typically implies that you do not have a fully bidirectional port, as in the Amiga case. As far as the CIAs are concerned, you can individually configure each line as either input or output. That does not go for a PC style parallel port where the data lines are fixed output lines, and only four lines are available as input.

In how far this limits Plipbox I cannot tell, but I would be astonished if it would work on such ports.

[pyrre]

Okay, this may be a moot point, but how does the plipbox compare to a more "normal" network interface card?

I know the plipbox is, obviously, much easier to acquire, but how does the throughput speeds compare?

A nice demo video of the plipbox on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egi3MiSgV1k

[QuikSanz]

@Curtis,

If you have a Zorro slot Keep your eye out for a Hypercom or IOBlix card.
High speed parallel ports at up to 560Kbps
High speed serial ports at up to 460Kbps

[clusteruk]

Hi

I have two plipboxes and I connect one to my A1000 with a 42mhz 020 and I get around 60KBytes per second if that helps. Where my Ariadne 2 gets about 225KBytes/sec.

Steve

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

If you have a Zorro slot Keep your eye out for a Hypercom or IOBlix card.
High speed parallel ports at up to 560Kbps
High speed serial ports at up to 460Kbps

Obvious question, but can the Plipbox handle such speeds (assuming you have one of the high speed parallel port cards)?  Has anyone tested this with one?

[madgrizzle]

Obvious question, but can the Plipbox handle such speeds (assuming you have one of the high speed parallel port cards)?  Has anyone tested this with one?

I was looking for a way to move the plipbox inside my Amiga 2000 and have been on the lookout for an IO card so I had easy access to a parallel port.  One was up on eBay and I bought it.  If no one else does, I will report back on my testing results when I get the card.  I have to read this:

http://lallafa.de/blog/2015/09/amiga-parallel-port-how-fast-can-you-go/

[Sir_Lucas]

I've got a plipbox and a lot of different PCMCIA cards, both Ethernet and WIFI:

A1200 030 + FTP + Roadshow TCP/IP stack (copying to RAM:)
Plipbox - 72KB/s
10mbps - 500 KB/s
10/100mbps - 570KB/s
WIFI WPA2/AES - 120KB/s

A1200 060 + FTP + Roadshow TCP/IP stack (copying to RAM:)
Plipbox - 88KB/s
10mbps - 900KB/s
10/100 - 980KB/s
WIFI WPA2/AES - 270KB/s

A600 V600 FTP + Roadshow TCP/IP (copying to RAM:)
Plipbox - 134KB/s
10mbps - 1,0MB/s
10/100 - 1,8MB/s
WIFI WPA2/AES - 430KB/s

If you are interested in WIFI WPA2/AES PCMCIA cards then have a look here:
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?81221-25-x-WIFI-CARDS-LINKSYS-WPA2-AES-AMIGA-A600-A1200-PCMCIA-WIFI&highlight=linksys

If you are interested in Ethernet PCMCIA cards then have a look here:
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?72182-7-x-ETHERNET-CARDS-NETGEAR-amp-3COM-AMIGA-A600-A1200-PCMCIA&highlight=netgear

[amiadudeorwat]

I have an A4000 with A2065 that gets about 1MB/s from FTP on local network.  Mediator Ethernet is about 1.1MB/s from FTP on local network.  

I don't understand why someone would buy a Zorro Parallel card then plug an also very slow plipbox into it.  

You can get an X-surf for a little more that is five times faster.