Raspberry Pi Zero W on clockport, anything out there?

[eXeler0]

Howdy,

Lost count on all the ongoing projects involving raspberry Pi for all sorts of purposes. The RGB to HDMI solution really has been a blessing btw..

Now, I'm pretty sure people have already thought about it, but I'm not really up to speed on the topic, and google didn't help this time: Is there an interface /solution for connecting a Raspberry Pi W to the clockport and use it for wireless networking on Amiga, but maybe also provide other options like USB and AHI sound /emulation?

Cheers

[kriz]

Never seen anything like that sadly, i know the spi bus ethernet module made for the clockport by 7bit was made, but it never got finished/working properly as I have heard (now it only lists sd card reader and rtc clock as supported) .. :/ https://www.7-bit.pl/?lang=en&go=projekty&name=SPICP

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by kriz

Never seen anything like that sadly, i know the spi bus ethernet module made for the clockport by 7bit was made, but it never got finished/working properly as I have heard (now it only lists sd card reader and rtc clock as supported) .. :/ https://www.7-bit.pl/?lang=en&go=projekty&name=SPICP

Yea I remember Spidi posting here a bunch of years ago, but that was before the Raspberry pi zero craze ;-)

[Promilus]

Like nearly everything new devices needs drivers on AOS side as well. This is true for SPI@clockport (it's only protocol, devices has unique registers and it's functionality still has to be integrated within AmigaOS - so writing firmware to let SPI running is just a tip of the iceberg). This is also true to any other device.

And as far as extensions goes - it's horrible idea to first pick tools and then look up for a job for them. It's best to start thinking about what you want to achieve exactly... and just then find the best tool for the job. As you can see:
https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=93505
this topic ain't new. Using clockport for such thing like USB is rather poor choice. It makes more sense to just use pistorm as it really will be much faster and basically the same goes to network. And there are some drivers for PiStorm. You'd have to write your own drivers both for RPi and for AmigaOS.

20 years ago we had times where there weren't great many hardware solutions, everything was expensive and rather primitive. Now there's plenty of hardware applicable for retro machines. There just aren't that developers willing to check out each and every possible solution and write free and public drivers for it.

[alexh]

There is of course PiSTorm which replaces the CPU rather than plug into the clock port. It offers AHI, RTG WiFi, Mass Storage plus others

[trixster]

A314 uses a Pi to give wireless network access. The was talk recently on the A314 discord about creating a zorro version of this.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by alexh

There is of course PiSTorm which replaces the CPU rather than plug into the clock port. It offers AHI, RTG WiFi, Mass Storage plus others

For the A1200? Where?

[alexh]

Google PiStorm32. Start by ordering an RPi CM4. They are unfortunately on back order until 2023 so by the time it arrives PiStorm32 should be on general release. Join the discord Dev channel for early access

[cheshirenoir]

@alexh I think Bruce Abbot was getting at the small detail that the PiStorm is not yet available for the A1200, only for the 68000 based systems
:-D

[Promilus]

@cheshirenoir - and yet there's no RPI@clockport as well And we know PiStorm32 IS under development

[eXeler0]

Tbh, dragging PiStorm into this discussion is a step too far for what I was asking. I was interested to see if there is a small useful solution for say networking and USB for the clockport, that would benefit 1200 users (and other with clockport) without having to resort to system wide emulation.
PiStorm as useful as it is, is software emulation that is taking it too far for a certain group of users that prefer their Amigas running on genuine 68k cpu and the Amiga chipset. Network, USB etc are novelties that weren't really there to begin with so they might as well be running on a RbPi Zero...
That's my opinion anyway..
Should be noted though that personally I have so many Amigas that I don't mind having different configs on them. I dont have a PiStorm yet, but I'm considering it for one of the A2000s, pretending it has an 030 and a RTG card.

[Daedalus]

Like so many things, the issue is the drivers, not connecting the hardware (which would be trivial). You'd need someone who can write a USB driver for the Amiga, ideally using an existing stack, and write the corresponding device emulation software for the Pi.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Like so many things, the issue is the drivers, not connecting the hardware (which would be trivial). You'd need someone who can write a USB driver for the Amiga, ideally using an existing stack, and write the corresponding device emulation software for the Pi.

I realize that, also I guess my original question has been answered at this point - meaning nothing like this has been done so far
RGB2HDMI was a really nice surprise few saw coming, btw.

What I don't know however is how much "inventing the wheel" is needed vs what's already done and... if it exists, is it available for use (open source, license etc) or exclusive to certain products. (--> Doesn't RapidRoad from iComp offer USB over clockport, etc.. and it uses a licensed USB stack)..
Anyway.. Original Question answered ;-)

[Daedalus]

Yeah, using Poseidon would be the best approach, I'm not sure how easy/difficult driver development would be. Cloning the RapidRoad/Subway/whatever protocol might be doable, in which case the driver for those boards could be used, but that's not likely to be welcomed by the respective developers. I think the bulk of the work would be the software on the Pi side, which needs to completely emulate such a board and the USB controller, then forward all the communications both ways. Doable I'm sure, and I'd love to see it appear.

[trixster]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

RGB2HDMI was a really nice surprise few saw coming, btw.

This is not quite true; RGBtoHDMI started on the bbc micro in 2018 long before it was adapted for Amiga.

https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14430

Hoglet and IanB then got it running on many different systems, so plenty of people saw it coming.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by trixster

This is not quite true; RGBtoHDMI started on the bbc micro in 2018 long before it was adapted for Amiga.

https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14430

Hoglet and IanB then got it running on many different systems, so plenty of people saw it coming.

Fair enough ;-)

[Promilus]

The reason why pistorm is better choice for projects like that is due to the fact emulated 68k has emulated FAST RAM access extremely fast. Which means usb driver, ethernet, wifi, sound etc. all communicate with emulated CPU and it's FAST through powerful internal RPI interface. Clockport on the other hand is rather slow, ~1MB/s - which doesn't really leave much room for anything useful running anywhere near native RPi speed of such peripherals. So there's actually no need to get anything nearly as powerful as RPi to get crawling usb or ethernet @ clockport anyway. It's just waste of resources. Should anyone need snail-paced ethernet, usb and so on... there are plenty of hw solutions more befitting that role and with much better availability.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

PiStorm as useful as it is, is software emulation that is taking it too far for a certain group of users that prefer their Amigas running on genuine 68k cpu and the Amiga chipset.

You can still use the Amiga chipset with PiSTorm.

Originally Posted by Promilus

The reason why pistorm is better choice for projects like that is due to the fact emulated 68k Which means usb, ethernet, wifi, sound etc. all communicate with emulated CPU through powerful internal RPI interface. Clockport on the other hand is rather slow

Exactly and it could emulate 3rd party hardware so you can use existing 68k AmigaOS drivers.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Promilus

The reason why pistorm is better choice for projects like that is due to the fact emulated 68k has emulated FAST RAM access extremely fast. Which means usb driver, ethernet, wifi, sound etc. all communicate with emulated CPU and it's FAST through powerful internal RPI interface. Clockport on the other hand is rather slow, ~1MB/s - which doesn't really leave much room for anything useful running anywhere near native RPi speed of such peripherals. So there's actually no need to get anything nearly as powerful as RPi to get crawling usb or ethernet @ clockport anyway. It's just waste of resources. Should anyone need snail-paced ethernet, usb and so on... there are plenty of hw solutions more befitting that role and with much better availability.

Im not questioning the logic here…. but what you say could be applied to a whole bunch of other things as well. Why buy a 030 accelerator, get a pistorm instead (if it was available for A1200)..
Actually why get a pistorm when WinUAE is free and runs on the PC you already have and you can mount PC drives etc so downloading stuff is super easy.
Amigaland nostalgia is usually not very logical or straightforward.

[Promilus]

I think you misunderstood the point I presented. The idea of RPI@clockport is like trying to shoot a crow with a navy railgun... It might work but it obviously would be an overkill anyway.

There's C64 floppy drive emulator Pi1541 using RPi to emulate whole drive (so 6502 CPU and it's DOS as well, not just interface like SD2IEC) and it's getting nearly perfect emulation. So were FPGA-based emulators. And that's kind of overkill as well but necessary if you have no C1541 and you need to run demos or games requiring full drive emulation (or otherwise they won't work).

But it's not the same with RPi and amiga floppy. There also was such project but it was clear Gotek (with STM32F105 or 107 iirc) can handle that as well and costs less. Before Gotek there was also FPGA based floppy emulator (HxC iirc) - yet another overkill cost-wise but at that time there were no alternatives.

So now you have it... there are alternatives for what you are trying accomplish either feature-wise (wifi, sound, usb) or hardware-wise (so using definitively clockport but on different hardware than RPi). But you should be aware of how poorly that interface suits those needs.