exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Very nice work sir.

I think the mod I really want for my A5000 is a proper network adapter so I can hook into my local LAN. I already have an EcoNet adapter, so should probably have a look over on Stardot, see what they recommend.

HigashiJun wrote: 03 Oct 2023 12:05 The UltraVIDC is described on this website:

https://www.retro-kit.co.uk/Ultra-VIDC- ... html#A3000

A nice piece of hardware.

I would also recommend you to fit the HD Floppy mod in your Archie.

Cool. Thanks. :)

rubber_jonnie wrote: 03 Oct 2023 13:34 I think the mod I really want for my A5000 is a proper network adapter so I can hook into my local LAN. I already have an EcoNet adapter, so should probably have a look over on Stardot, see what they recommend.

I've bodged my A3000 onto the network with serial. The stack is a bit of a faff IIRC.

You can get ethernet podules on ebay quite frequently and CJE down in Littlehampton often sells them. Expect it to be £90 or thereabouts for a 10baseT, mind.

One of my longer-term plans was to try to develop a lightweight network adapter for the podule port.

BW

Badwolf wrote: 03 Oct 2023 16:49
You can get ethernet podules on ebay quite frequently and CJE down in Littlehampton often sells them. Expect it to be £90 or thereabouts for a 10baseT, mind.

One of my longer-term plans was to try to develop a lightweight network adapter for the podule port.

BW

I do look at eBay quite regularly, but CJE were charging £145 when I looked today, and that is rather more than I'd like to pay.

Maybe you'll get round to a podule, I'd certainly be interested.

rubber_jonnie wrote: 03 Oct 2023 13:34 Very nice work sir.

I think the mod I really want for my A5000 is a proper network adapter so I can hook into my local LAN. I already have an EcoNet adapter, so should probably have a look over on Stardot, see what they recommend.

Thank you sir !

An internal 10Base-2 adapter do exist for the A3000:

https://www.cjemicros.co.uk/micros/indi ... -3K10B2-SH

but you have to tweak your hardware if you want to fit it along your IDE adapter:

https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic ... 16&t=26273

I guess the A5000 is much more endowed and fitting an extra adapter is less pain.

HigashiJun wrote: 04 Oct 2023 05:08

rubber_jonnie wrote: 03 Oct 2023 13:34 Very nice work sir.

I think the mod I really want for my A5000 is a proper network adapter so I can hook into my local LAN. I already have an EcoNet adapter, so should probably have a look over on Stardot, see what they recommend.

Thank you sir !

An internal 10Base-2 adapter do exist for the A3000:

https://www.cjemicros.co.uk/micros/indi ... -3K10B2-SH

but you have to tweak your hardware if you want to fit it along your IDE adapter:

https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic ... 16&t=26273

I guess the A5000 is much more endowed and fitting an extra adapter is less pain.

Yes, fitting a podule really isn't an issue on the A5000, there are multiple slots free in mine so it really would be simple, and I'd probably end up spending as much building an econet bridge as it would cost to buy a card from CJE, but spending that much for network access on a machine I don't use a lot, well, it's a difficult prospect.

The A3000 looks to be a bit more of a difficult prospect though.

The A3000 "mini podule" has very little to do with the podules for the other Acorn machines. It basically connects with a couple of headers onto the motherboard. It's a really cheap and poor design. I think the emphasis is on "cheap".

stephen_usher wrote: 04 Oct 2023 10:03 The A3000 "mini podule" has very little to do with the podules for the other Acorn machines. It basically connects with a couple of headers onto the motherboard. It's a really cheap and poor design. I think the emphasis is on "cheap".

8 bit too isn't it?

BW

Badwolf wrote: 04 Oct 2023 10:52 8 bit too isn't it?

BW

I think so, yes.

A quick update.

So everything seems to work good:


IDE, Econet, 4MB RAM, keyboard and mouse are working without any issues.

The original FDD works but doesn't seem to recognise floppies. Will have to check that later.

Next steps will be HD FDD install and UltraVIDC.

So far so good.

The Archie A3000 is such a lovely machine.

:D

:dualthumbup: