Oops, I did it again... (USB drives on Amiga)

[ferix]

Hello again,

I'm proud to show you my last project:





As you would guess, it's an USB controller attached to the Amiga parallel port, plus an storage media driver that allows you to use any filesystem you want (direct access to sectors on drive).

On those pictures it's running on a plain A500 (512k chip, 512k slow) with fat95 filesystem, and it achieves about 33kbytes/sec. on read, twice on write.

I'm yet working on it (I have some init problems with slow devices) but it's quite stable and usable

It's based on the VNC1L development board, the VDIP1 (you can buy it at ebay), so it's simple enough to be built at home.

I'll post all the files required to build one yourself in the near future.

*** NEW DRIVER ***

Edit:

I've attached a file with the instructions and the driver.

http://eab.abime.net/attachment.php?...1&d=1436945624

[jbenam]

You're a true hero, ferix

Will it support other USB devices apart from mass-storage? Probably not, but doesn't hurt to ask

[ferix]

@jbernam, I'm sure it can, but I'm not sure if it will :P

The firmware in the controller can manage some other peripheral, like mice, keyboards and joysticks (HID devices), but a driver has to be written...

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by ferix

@jbernam, I'm sure it can, but I'm not sure if it will :P

The firmware in the controller can manage some other peripheral, like mice, keyboards and joysticks (HID devices), but a driver has to be written...

Awesome. I suppose that means it won't be able to run a full USB stack (like Anaiis/Poseidon) then?

There are various USB mice/kb/joypads projects out there, you might try asking around, who knows

[ferix]

I think it can run some sort of reduced USB stack...

The USB controller allows to talk directly to the USB devices, but it still manages the bus, so it does the enumeration and all that stuff...

[Yulquen74]

Very cool!

Looking forward to your completion of this project!

Question:
Will transfer rates benefit from an accelerated A500,
or are you already approaching the speed limit?

[hooverphonique]

cool.. the "media storage driver" you mentioned, is that the exec device you are using? and does that in turn use parallelport.device?

[ferix]

Sure it will benefit from faster machines, but I don't believe it will go faster than 100Kbytes/sec...

The problem here are the CIAs. Those chips are clocked at 1Mhz, so the faster you can access them is just half this frequency, but I need 3 accesses to them to complete a single byte read, plus the time needed to copy that byte to the main memory.

[ferix]

@hooverphonique
The exec device is called usb.device, but it can be renamed...

I'm not using the paralleport.device, I'm just talking straight to the CIAs, but in an OS friendly way, reserving the resources to take exclusive access to them, so no other device can use the parallel port.

Edit:
I meant "storage media driver"... :P
Fixed...

[Franchute13]

Hello Ferix!

Awesome project! just great.
What need to complete the project?

Greetings and congratulations.

[ferix]

@Franchute13,

I have to solve some initialization problems. Some slow devices take a long time to set up and cause timeout problems.

By other hand, I need to learn how to make it removable, from the point of view of the OS...

[HardStep]

Great work

Stylish USB-device icon as well

[Nekoniaow]

This is really nice, congratulation for your efforts!

I wish the Kickstart supported some kind of autoconfig protocol for other expansion ports than the "zorro" ones. This way you could just put the drivers in a ROM attached to your card (or maybe directly in the firmware) and Exec would load them directly from your device.

Do you have any plans to "upgrade" this design to plug on the 86/zorro expansion ports in the future?

[amiman99]

Looks very promising! Thank you for your work and I can't wait till it's finished.

[amigoun]

Originally Posted by ferix

@Franchute13, By other hand, I need to learn how to make it removable, from the point of view of the OS...

You can look to ppazip.lha on Aminet, sourcecode is included, so maybe you can get the required info there.

[hooverphonique]

Originally Posted by ferix

@hooverphonique
The exec device is called usb.device, but it can be renamed...

ok.. and this implements a block device that gives direct access to the sectors of the usb storage device, if I understand correctly, and it can then be mounted with any filesystem of choice..

was this device written by you??

[Nibbler]

Great Stuff FERIX !!!

[VincentGR]

This is amazing!

[ferix]

Originally Posted by hooverphonique

ok.. and this implements a block device that gives direct access to the sectors of the usb storage device, if I understand correctly, and it can then be mounted with any filesystem of choice..

was this device written by you??

Yep, that's it, and yes, I wrote it myself

[ferix]

Originally Posted by amigoun

You can look to ppazip.lha on Aminet, sourcecode is included, so maybe you can get the required info there.

Thank amigoun, I've been looking a lot of sources to understand how the amiga os drivers work, and this was one of them, but I'm still learning