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jbilander · 08 June 2020, 14:32

Hi all,

It's unveil time!

Me and Niklas have been working on a sd-card project for the A500 as a hobby project for a couple of weeks and it's starting to look really promising. As you all might know it is pretty hard to exchange files from your PC to the A500 and vice versa, especially for newcomers and people returning to the Amiga scene this is a frequent question posted on the forums. "How do I copy things over from my PC to the A500?"...we wanted to make life easier so we created a small device which we call the sdbox.

Completely open source hardware and software. You can build one yourself

It uses a cheap Arduino Nano V3 and a common cheap MicroSD Card Adapter that you solder onto a small PCB with a d-sub db25 connector which you can plug directly into the parallel port of your Amiga and get a disk mounted. We use the fat95-drivers from Aminet and a sd-card formatted with a FAT/FAT32 partition that you format let's say 2GB in size or so. The sdbox needs to be powered externally. The driver should be AmigaOS system friendly but takes exclusive access over the parallel port so don't expect to run other things on this port together with the sdbox with some kind of breakout cable. It should work from 1.3 and upwards, not verified on all OS versions yet though, but Niklas got it working in 1.3 at least with the earlier vbcc compiles.

Github repos here:

https://github.com/jbilander/sdbox

https://github.com/niklasekstrom/ami...to-spi-adapter

One little caveat to keep in mind is that we do no CRC-checking of data being copied so please verify your files afterwards if you are going to copy important files over this way like taking a backup or something. Another caveat is that not all sd-cards might work with the sdbox so aim for a cheap 4/8 GB card and format it with a smaller partition below 4GB with FAT is a good starting point.

Many thanks to Mike Stirling for writing the original k1208-drivers and making them open source, we built further on his code. It was a good starting point. Thanks Mike and Kipper2K and others involved in k1208.

What about performance you may ask?
Well, Niklas managed to write the drivers with some really clever assembler to make it go at 2E-speed (theoretical 350 KB/s, IRL around 225-280 KB/s) if you have some kind of accelerator installed in your A500.
Copying a 23 MB file from the SD-card to the compact flash in the HC508 took 98 seconds, giving a throughput of 225 KB/s. We think this is a good result given the fact of the slow clocking of the CIAs (E-clock). It will also work with a standard 68k CPU at 7 MHz although slower.

With my TF534 and 3.1 rom loaded into Fast RAM via the command "cpu fastrom" (requires a MMU) I get 280 KB/s in SysInfo, and without fastrom 250 KB/s. Copying the 8.5 MB pdf-file in video below took around 48s or 42s depending on direction. It is a little slower copying to the Amiga than from the Amiga.

https://i.imgur.com/G6VRPpx.mp4

Speed definition of 2E here:
https://lallafa.de/blog/2015/09/amig...st-can-you-go/

For all the current owners of plipboxes: Niklas's 2E code improvements would probably work with the plipbox too, giving it a performance boost with an accelerator installed. We wired the sdbox similar to the plipbox for this reason, compatibility!. There is also an issue raised on the plipbox github repository in which Niklas explains the improvement, for those interested...
https://github.com/cnvogelg/plipbox/issues/11

Please note, we have done very limited testing so far and only on the A500. It will probably work on other Amigas as well but it remains to be seen. Please help with such verifications should you decide to build a sdbox and have big box Amigas. The A1000 needs a proper gender changer or an altered PCB using a female plug. Everything done here is provided "as is", don't blame us if your Amiga CIAs dies or your files get corrupted using the sdbox. I don't think it will happen though. Be careful though when plugging the sdbox in and out of the Amiga, always do this with the Amiga turned off. Powering through the barrel jack connector is still not tested, I'm awaiting parts for that. Hopefully it will work and the device will power down when the Amiga is shut down and vice versa.

We hope this will help some fellow Amigans out there who wants a cheap alternative storage solution for their Amiga(s).

I will put pre-built binaries on the sdbox github repository soon. Expect it to appear under the "releases" tab.

ENJOY!!

08 June 2020, 14:32	#1
jbilander Registered User Join Date: Jun 2018 Location: Stockholm Age: 48 Posts: 265	sdbox for Amiga [Official thread] Hi all, It's unveil time! Me and Niklas have been working on a sd-card project for the A500 as a hobby project for a couple of weeks and it's starting to look really promising. As you all might know it is pretty hard to exchange files from your PC to the A500 and vice versa, especially for newcomers and people returning to the Amiga scene this is a frequent question posted on the forums. "How do I copy things over from my PC to the A500?"...we wanted to make life easier so we created a small device which we call the sdbox. Completely open source hardware and software. You can build one yourself It uses a cheap Arduino Nano V3 and a common cheap MicroSD Card Adapter that you solder onto a small PCB with a d-sub db25 connector which you can plug directly into the parallel port of your Amiga and get a disk mounted. We use the fat95-drivers from Aminet and a sd-card formatted with a FAT/FAT32 partition that you format let's say 2GB in size or so. The sdbox needs to be powered externally. The driver should be AmigaOS system friendly but takes exclusive access over the parallel port so don't expect to run other things on this port together with the sdbox with some kind of breakout cable. It should work from 1.3 and upwards, not verified on all OS versions yet though, but Niklas got it working in 1.3 at least with the earlier vbcc compiles. Github repos here: https://github.com/jbilander/sdbox https://github.com/niklasekstrom/ami...to-spi-adapter One little caveat to keep in mind is that we do no CRC-checking of data being copied so please verify your files afterwards if you are going to copy important files over this way like taking a backup or something. Another caveat is that not all sd-cards might work with the sdbox so aim for a cheap 4/8 GB card and format it with a smaller partition below 4GB with FAT is a good starting point. Many thanks to Mike Stirling for writing the original k1208-drivers and making them open source, we built further on his code. It was a good starting point. Thanks Mike and Kipper2K and others involved in k1208. What about performance you may ask? Well, Niklas managed to write the drivers with some really clever assembler to make it go at 2E-speed (theoretical 350 KB/s, IRL around 225-280 KB/s) if you have some kind of accelerator installed in your A500. Copying a 23 MB file from the SD-card to the compact flash in the HC508 took 98 seconds, giving a throughput of 225 KB/s. We think this is a good result given the fact of the slow clocking of the CIAs (E-clock). It will also work with a standard 68k CPU at 7 MHz although slower. With my TF534 and 3.1 rom loaded into Fast RAM via the command "cpu fastrom" (requires a MMU) I get 280 KB/s in SysInfo, and without fastrom 250 KB/s. Copying the 8.5 MB pdf-file in video below took around 48s or 42s depending on direction. It is a little slower copying to the Amiga than from the Amiga. https://i.imgur.com/G6VRPpx.mp4 Speed definition of 2E here: https://lallafa.de/blog/2015/09/amig...st-can-you-go/ For all the current owners of plipboxes: Niklas's 2E code improvements would probably work with the plipbox too, giving it a performance boost with an accelerator installed. We wired the sdbox similar to the plipbox for this reason, compatibility!. There is also an issue raised on the plipbox github repository in which Niklas explains the improvement, for those interested... https://github.com/cnvogelg/plipbox/issues/11 Please note, we have done very limited testing so far and only on the A500. It will probably work on other Amigas as well but it remains to be seen. Please help with such verifications should you decide to build a sdbox and have big box Amigas. The A1000 needs a proper gender changer or an altered PCB using a female plug. Everything done here is provided "as is", don't blame us if your Amiga CIAs dies or your files get corrupted using the sdbox. I don't think it will happen though. Be careful though when plugging the sdbox in and out of the Amiga, always do this with the Amiga turned off. Powering through the barrel jack connector is still not tested, I'm awaiting parts for that. Hopefully it will work and the device will power down when the Amiga is shut down and vice versa. We hope this will help some fellow Amigans out there who wants a cheap alternative storage solution for their Amiga(s). I will put pre-built binaries on the sdbox github repository soon. Expect it to appear under the "releases" tab. ENJOY!!