Update for X-Surf networking card

[lost_loven]

Originally Posted by amigakit.com

Thanks everyone!

We are working through the details for this new product- please watch this space.

Watching.. waiting.... ...

lost

[Cymru]

End of August?

[Kin Hell]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

Pre-order phase for X-Surf-100 to be launched with all resellers today. Should you prefer to buy directly, try my new direct shop. Every single order will be served. There is no need to place double orders. As always: Shop locally!

Pre-order phase runs until august 14th, "high noon" (12:00 CET). Parcels to resellers will be shipped on august 30th.

Jens

I ordered one moments ago through Vesalia to save £25.00 Bank Transfer costs from the UK....

If you had Debit card or PayPal Jens, I would have bought direct from you.

Any idea on approximate costs of the USB module for this card?

[Retrofan]

Originally Posted by Kin Hell

I ordered one moments ago through Vesalia to save £25.00 Bank Transfer costs from the UK....

If you had Debit card or PayPal Jens, I would have bought direct from you.

...

Amigakit has Paypal too.

[lost_loven]

With the USB module can you use a usb flash drive as a bootable drive as well?, And besides how much it might cost, when will it be released?

lost

Just ordered from Amigakit!!!! WOOT! thx!

[Kin Hell]

Originally Posted by lost_loven

With the USB module can you use a usb flash drive as a bootable drive as well?, And besides how much it might cost, when will it be released?

lost

Just ordered from Amigakit!!!! WOOT! thx!

Good question RE: the Bootable USB option, but RE the cost of the USB as an extra, look @ the X-Surf 100 this way.....

For 148-ish Euros to the door, I get a faster & better NIC card for my A4KD than anything previously released. If you were going to chuck it in an Amiga that doesn't have ZORRO III, then it might be a waste of time, but also don't forget, Jens has already agreed the cost of NIC cards for big-box Amiga's is silly already. Ariadne II cards are fetching a hefty price (more than X-Surf 100) & are slower on throughput. The only caveat with his card is it not working with other ZORRO boards, which isn't really a biggy as nothing is worth having unless you have a G-REX 4000. Sure, Elbox A4000 solutions are okay, but DMA is & always has been a real fudged event with their solutions, much like USB cards for the Amiga's. I'm hedging my bets that Jens is still using proper Commodore protocols & DMA is fully functional for this card, getting the faster transfer speeds on ZORRO III Amiga's with a better NIC chipset.

Golden rule here for the X-Surf 100 from what I have read & digested is, stick it in an A3K or A4K for best possible experience. RE: the USB side of things, I'm sure Jens has the rest of it in his hat.

....Kin hopes the USB module price doesn't bend the wallet too far & fully supports DMA in every manner....

C'mon Jens.....

[amigakit.com]

@lost_loven
Many thanks for your order from us!


@Kin_hell
I take it that the X-Surf 100 you ordered from another Amiga dealer is going to be installed in the Amiga 4000 we repaired for you?

@all
We are bundling a free copy of EasyNet with every X-Surf 100 we sell.

[strim]

NetBSD/amiga now also supports the X-Surf 100. The new xsh(4) driver is now stable, I just did a full NetBSD installation over the network to confirm that.

The driver does not yet use any of the advanced features X-Surf 100 provides, so performance under NetBSD is only a bit better than the old X-Surf.

[lost_loven]

what does NetBSD do? sorry .. Noob here now with real networking with amiga.

lost

[strim]

Originally Posted by lost_loven

what does NetBSD do? sorry .. Noob here now with real networking with amiga.

NetBSD is an operating system, you can read more here or make another thread on EAB specifically about NetBSD/amiga. Let's try not to pollute this thread with off-topic discussion

[Kin Hell]

Originally Posted by amigakit.com

....<snip>....

@Kin_hell
I take it that the X-Surf 100 you ordered from another Amiga dealer is going to be installed in the Amiga 4000 we repaired for you?

....<snip>....

Don't you think I searched your web site first?

On Saturday, there was nothing on the search engine for X-Surf 100, nothing listed in ZORRO section & nothing listed in Networking that I saw @ the time. I even tried phoning you guys on Saturday late lunchtime, desperately hoping the cleaner might answer the phone & take an order. My work schedule can take me away from phones & networking during normal business hours for several days at a time & I didn't want a repeat ball ache event trying to acquire one as with other limited Individual products in the past.

And of course 'kin of course, who's Amiga did you think I'd be buying one for?

I might get back to you on this. Hold the phone......

[bubbob42]

Originally Posted by Kin Hell

The only caveat with his card is it not working with other ZORRO boards, which isn't really a biggy as nothing is worth having unless you have a G-REX 4000.

The card works fine in my Mediator A4000di.

Best regards,

Marcus

[Kin Hell]

Originally Posted by bubbob42

The card works fine in my Mediator A4000di.

Best regards,

Marcus

That's good to hear bud.

I always fancied one of those Di boards to keep my A4KD in a desktop case & have PCI capabilities again. I should never have got rid of my G-Rex 4000. That PCI, fully DMA compliant board rocked.

[Schoenfeld]

New x-surf-100.device driver V1.8 uploaded to http://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/X-Surf-100

Device now checks if Z3 autoconfig worked, and if board is at an address where it can actually work (MSB of base address must be 0). If Mediator logic board is found to be the cause, a requester should open that tells the user to close the "swap config" jumper.

The 2MBytes/s barrier has been broken today:

http://www.a1k.org/forum/showpost.ph...&postcount=451

Jens

[DonAmiga]

Cool just ordered mine from Amigakit

[matthey]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

The 2MBytes/s barrier has been broken today:

http://www.a1k.org/forum/showpost.ph...&postcount=451

Awesome! The X-Surf 100 may be the fastest working Ethernet on any Amiga. It's certainly faster than a 100Mbit Ethernet Mediator card. There are some fpga boards around that may be faster if they had a working driver but they aren't for sale yet.

[Kin Hell]

Originally Posted by matthey

Awesome! The X-Surf 100 may be the fastest working Ethernet on any Amiga. It's certainly faster than a 100Mbit Ethernet Mediator card. There are some fpga boards around that may be faster if they had a working driver but they aren't for sale yet.

100Mbit Ethernet cards on Mediator boards will only offer poor 10Mbit transfer speeds because of Elbox DMA fudge. - Especially with Realtek Chipset NIC's.

A 10Mbit Ethernet card in a G-REX 4000 totally smokes a 100Mbit card in a mediator board. - A4KD or A4KT Mediator solution, even if with Realtek Chipset NIC on the G-REX 4000.

Elbox never got DMA right on any of their products....

@ Jens Schoenfeld

What about USB Module price guideline fo X-Surf100 please? - Just a Ball park figure & nothing meant to put you over a barrel, honestly and can you please comment on the DMA side of things with this X-surf100 & the DMA side of things with the USB module??

Thanks.

@ DonAmiga

Heh fella, u r a Darling.

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by Kin Hell

@ Jens Schoenfeld

What about USB Module price guideline fo X-Surf100 please? - Just a Ball park figure & nothing meant to put you over a barrel, honestly and can you please comment on the DMA side of things with this X-surf100 & the DMA side of things with the USB module??

There is no DMA on my cards, and neither is there any DMA in the usual way on *any* PCI implementation of the Amiga. What they do is a DMA into PCI gfx card memory (which works great), and then polled-IO to transfer the data from GFX mem into Amiga memory. In essence, the DMA part on the PCI boards is a detour, because most PCI chipsets don't allow direct PIO.

X-Surf (both the 10MBit and 100MBit versions) are pure PIO designs, so in comparison to PCI cards, you skip one step in data transfer, which makes things faster. Remember the prime directive of optimization: The fastest operation is one that you don't execute. Network data doesn't belong in GFX memory.

There is only very few real DMA cards for the Amiga: GVP SCSI controllers, Fastlane (=4091) and Deneb.

I'm aiming at the "Subway" ballpark with the USB module price. You get two High-speed USB ports and a Poseidon license.

Jens

[fitzsteve]

@Jens, internal USB header would be great if possible on the UBS card for using internal Disk readers, etc

[hooverphonique]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

polled-IO to transfer the data from GFX mem into Amiga memory. In essence, the DMA part on the PCI boards is a detour, because most PCI chipsets don't allow direct PIO.

so this polled-IO is some form of short DMA transfer (64bits?) of data from gfx memory to the pci busboard and then to the cpu via the zorro bus?