exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Tried the Mega with a 1.02/1.04 eprom with no joy. Pretty much hangs immediately so eprom emulator appears to be off the hook. Appears the netusbee is a sensitive little beast. When its booting immediately after power is applied the floppy light comes on all most immediately. With the netusbee plugged in no floppy light.. just hangs.

Another comparison... tried the netusbee in the other H4.. the first one built. Works fine.. so it doesn't work with the H4 with the SMT glue and MMU. All other carts I have work on both machines. Thats a pretty sensitive device. Hangs on boot with one.. works fine on the other. :dizzy:

I think it works by accident on most machines. No doubt it's some sort of timing problem. Did anyone look at the specs etc. I posted a link to the other day to see what might be the issue?

P.S. I can't find the post now, but here's the link to the file anyway: http://hardware.atari.org/files/netusbee.zip

Anyone have a schematic is a image or something ? Says file it is using "EASY PC"... I've not use that since the early 90s!

I'm not sure if this will load the older "Easy PC" files as it's based on an earlier version (but at least it's free):

https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/p ... stallation

stephen_usher wrote: 05 Mar 2020 09:09 I think it works by accident on most machines. No doubt it's some sort of timing problem. Did anyone look at the specs etc. I posted a link to the other day to see what might be the issue?

P.S. I can't find the post now, but here's the link to the file anyway: http://hardware.atari.org/files/netusbee.zip

Yes, I won't be buying any additional netusbee's. I've designed and written a lot of hardware drivers for OS9 at Motorola and a BIG rule was NEVER use timing delays ESPECIALLY software loops!! If you do that any change any where runs a good risk of breaking the driver. I suspect the software for the netusbee is using timing loops which are inherently prone to failure.

So in summary, it works on the falcon, and one H4.

It hangs the other H4, the mega, and the ST.

Have never tried it on MSTE since it uses a Lightning card.

If you buy one its going to be a real CRAP Shoot if its going to work. I believe the more stock the machine the better your chances maybe but who wants to risk it. :coffee:

If its stopping your machine from booting up, then it can't be a software issue ?

Maybe it is something dumb where they must be using tricks to control the read/write to the port ?, so maybe it is intermittently starting up in a bad state and trying to write to the bus corrupting it :shrug:

Nothing interrmittant about it.. its a solid freeze. If I really wanted it to work I'd dive into it but I have a lot more interesting projects in the works so as I said earlier I'll dedicate it to the falcon where it appears to be happy for now. :shock:

PaulJ wrote: 05 Mar 2020 13:59 Yes, I won't be buying any additional netusbee's. I've designed and written a lot of hardware drivers for OS9 at Motorola and a BIG rule was NEVER use timing delays ESPECIALLY software loops!! If you do that any change any where runs a good risk of breaking the driver. I suspect the software for the netusbee is using timing loops which are inherently prone to failure.

Nope, it's merely accessing the hardware directly in terms of reading the network adapter ROM and reading the registers. However, it uses a "write using read" hack to write to the registers. From what I understand it uses the bottom 8(?) bits of a range of addresses as the values to write into a memory location. The drivers do this blind as the chip doesn't expose the values written anyway. I did look into this a while ago and went through the NIC drivers line by line.

On my TT it can read the NIC ROM and register values but the "write using read" fails. On the STE with the Exxos PSU it can't even read the ROM or registers, with the Atari PSU it works beautifully on the same machine. :WTF: :sigh:

stephen_usher wrote: 05 Mar 2020 14:28 On my TT it can read the NIC ROM and register values but the "write using read" fails. On the STE with the Exxos PSU it can't even read the ROM or registers, with the Atari PSU it works beautifully on the same machine. :WTF: :sigh:

Ya I haven't looked at it at all but it sounds like a total hack when the normal cartridge port is read only. It could be pretty cool to change the driver for the H4 where it would use the new write capability instead of the write hack. Even when its working I prefer the Lighting card.

I've had this 3d printer setting in the box which is driving me nuts. Wife wants me to build a case for it to reduce the vapors which I have agreed to do but I need to check it out to insure its working. So the ole netusbee will need to stand on its own merits and will only use it where it works. I guest this is just a warning to others that there's no guarantee it will work and if possible a LightningST or LightningVME is a better solution for usb and ethernet in my opinion. :D