What hardware for Amiga 500 to Broadband?

[whiteb]

Originally Posted by mr_a500

Here I am, posting this from my 8Mb A500. Guess what I'm doing? Yep, that's right... I'm viewing .

I have a second browser tab, a page with some badly dithered , but I also simultaneously have a 24-bit DCTV image on another screen. Nice, eh?

Well come on, tell us what you are using to connect to the web (Hardware/Software) unless I missed that part.

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by whiteb

Well come on, tell us what you are using to connect to the web (Hardware/Software) unless I missed that part.

IE6?

[ppill]

Originally Posted by Zetr0

HTML Web Browsing is just not going to happen on an 8mb a500... personally I wish some one had wrote a WAP broweser for the Amiga, that would indeed be awesome and wouldn't need that much processing power.

Hmmmmm now that would be a cool coding project for the miggy, I would love to tie-it-in with ppill's Hombre project!

Not going to happen for a couple of reasons. One you'd need a TCP/IP stack compatible with 1.3 kickstart. There's one called AmigaNOS but it's a pain to configure (I gave up after reading the manual). Second, the speed you'd get would make it nearly impossible to do anything useful/practical, even text stuff like FTP, IRC, E-Mail etc. The serial port on a bog standard A500 can handle 19200 bps when using system friendly devices and that's with a two colour screen and CPU's usage almost at 100%. If you settle for less speed I guess you can give it a try.

It would be a "fun" project and probably you could learn a few things along the way but you'd end up with nothing even remotely useful.

Now if someone would port an 68000 TCP/IP stack (there's one out there somewhere, can't remember the name) and write (in assembler) a set of internet utilities that would bang the hardware directly and come up with an easy way to attach a network card to the expansion bus, then...

If a C64 can do it why not an Amiga500?

But sadly, we all know that's not going to happen.

[Zetr0]

@ppill

theres a guy over on world of sinclair names Winston, he has developed a TCP/IP stack for simple ZX Spectrum.

I will have a chin-wag with Winston see what hurdles there were to writting it.... I need something code-wise to inspire me to get back into coding

[Photon]

paulcan said "An A500". Doesn't mean it's worse (or better!!) than any other Motorola-based Amiga. An accelerator board would increase your options and enjoyability tho, I think. I'm not quite there yet when it comes to internet on Amiga knowledge, but I think iBrowse on any Motorola-based Amiga without an extra graphics card would let any PC/Mac/Linux-user down?

As Zetr0, the purveyor of enthusiasm in this thread said, it's about making it happen. The only difference to other Amigas is that it might be trickier to get a driver and setup a TCP/IP stack. Quite apart from that, I've not seen a single ethernet card or adapter for A500. That means that there is no driver for this nonexistant hardware either.

One solution could be a PCMCIA connector on a card for the expansion port or memory slot. If it were in the same memory space as PCMCIA on A600 (above 4mb fast ram, ie. $600000 and up?), maybe A600 drivers could work with some modification?

This could work if there's no special chip handling the PCMCIA communication. Does Gayle do that? If so, then drivers would have to be modified to communicate over the expansion port directly. THAT, I think is the hard part.

What is NOT impossible is that some hardware hero could build such a board and ask someone to modify the drivers.

Me, I'd love to see that for my A500-040. Wouldn't that be uber cool?

[ppill]

Tiny TCP/IP http://www.sics.se/~adam/uip/index.php/Main_Page

I think even someone over at amiga.org ported this but it requires a 2.x kickstart to work.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Photon

Quite apart from that, I've not seen a single ethernet card or adapter for A500. That means that there is no driver for this nonexistant hardware either.

I have, there is a version of the Hydra Amiganet card for the A500. I even owned one at one point.

Works with the samed drivers as the ZorroII version. Actually it IS the Zorro II version, just with the A500 jumper set and a 86pin connector soldered onto it. All in a nice case.

I wouldn't bother trying to find one though.

[mr_a500]

Originally Posted by paulcan

I have no idea I'm just
Just wanted to see on an amiga, and that probably wouldn't be viewable would it?

Here's a screenshot from my A500 (it's not exactly ... damn those posting guidelines )

As you can see, it's badly dithered... but anything want to see in more colours I just right-click, save and run jpgtodctv to see it in 24bit with DCTV.

[Zetr0]

Originally Posted by ppill

Tiny TCP/IP http://www.sics.se/~adam/uip/index.php/Main_Page

I think even someone over at amiga.org ported this but it requires a 2.x kickstart to work.

Now gonna be looking into this, I am curious to see what 2.x dependencies are required, maybe they could be included in hombre ?

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Jope

I have, there is a version of the Hydra Amiganet card for the A500. I even owned one at one point.

Works with the samed drivers as the ZorroII version. Actually it IS the Zorro II version, just with the A500 jumper set and a 86pin connector soldered onto it. All in a nice case.

I wouldn't bother trying to find one though.

Awesome So what is needed is to make a card that works like the Zorro II version (rev 1.2, I guess since it has 10baseT?) that goes in the expansion port, and the drivers should be sorted? Any FPGA wizards out there?

Here are the drivers for the Zorro II version http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/amiganet2000, as I see it there should be no (or hardware-fixable) difference in addressing etc, so the drivers should work as is on A500 with a jumper or so?

Why the Zorro II version? Well as you say Jope it might be not as super rare, so maybe an FPGA dev could borrow one and preserve this hardware that I didn't even know existed...

BNC is nostalgia Maybe put another connector on there too

Shouldn't any TCP/IP stack work when the driver is correct? I thought it was some kind of unit like PAR: (but not PAR: ofc...)?

[mr_a500]

If you're truly insane (and rich), I think this is the ultimate way to get A500 broadband:

1. Viper 530 (030 is minimum for USB stack) Price: 300 euro... if you're lucky on eBay



2. A500 clockport adapter & Subway USB. Price:100 euro (now on sale!) -Individual Computers



3. USB Ethernet. Price:8 euro - very common



I was going to try it myself, but then I realised that after ALL THAT, I'd still only be browsing with a non-CSS browser in 16 colours.


Edit: I forgot #4. Mini Megi 2Mb chip (...or you run out of chip RAM damn fast) Price: 100 euro

[Lockon]

@mr_a500

Well said.
I started almost the same project a year ago. Got A500+ expanded to 2Mb CHIP, GVP A530 with full 030@40, 8Mb FAST, clockport, Subway and USB-Ethernet adapter. It doesn't work as expected. USB stack is pooling CPU inserting interrupt every few miliseconds reducing overall speed to a crawl (best guess - I'd say something similar to 1% of stock A500 feel). Guys from E3B said that has to do with accelerator design and frankly, I guess they're right. One lucky Amiga user at A1K.ORG has similar setup run on PPS040, it works like charm.