A5000 - diving in at the deep end!

[stephen_usher]

[mrbombermillzy]

Another job well done.

[rubber_jonnie]

Thanks gents

[HigashiJun]

Well done !

[rubber_jonnie]

It was late last night so I didn't really fully test, but I did this morning before work.

It all works just great, I can format, create directories, copy and delete files and it all works flawlessly, so very happy with it overall.

Apart from the plastic case...

The case is awful and creaky, and wobbly and very poor now it's not lasted well, though I suppose it is nearly 30 years old.

[rubber_jonnie]

OK, so I took a punt and ordered a NIC podule from CJE. The price was a bit eyewatering, but it was the last one they had in stock of any kind of NIC, and eBay was coming up empty.

I'll update more when I get it, but now I need to find an AUI to Ethernet transceiver, so I can convert to RJ45 for a connection to my LAN.

[rubber_jonnie]

Well, it arrived:

PXL_20231012_123651388.jpg (224.2 KiB) Viewed 1012 times

Just letting it warm up as it felt rather cold when I unwrapped it. Next I need to dig out an AUI to ethernet (RJ45) adapter or find a 10b2 to ethernet media converter somewhere.

[alexh]

I am very surprised there are no RPi Pico W podules which add WiFi to RiscOS machines. The hardware design wouldn't be so bad, a voltage regulator for power, a few bidirectional voltage level shifters, some discrete components for pullups for bus noise. There's already a general purpose RPi Pico podule design available. The hard bit is no doubt the driver side? I don't think there are quite enough I/O on the RPi Pico to be a full 16-bit podule and so the Pico can't emulate an existing ethernet podule (so as to be able to use existing drivers). So any such project needs a good RiscOS programmer to create a new driver.

[rubber_jonnie]

I am very surprised there are no RPi Pico W podules which add WiFi to RiscOS machines. The hardware design wouldn't be so bad, a voltage regulator for power, a few bidirectional voltage level shifters, some discrete components for pullups for bus noise. There's already a general purpose RPi Pico podule design available. The hard bit is no doubt the driver side? I don't think there are quite enough I/O on the RPi Pico to be a full 16-bit podule and so the Pico can't emulate an existing ethernet podule (so as to be able to use existing drivers). So any such project needs a good RiscOS programmer to create a new driver.

Yeah, it could really do with a project, but after discussing and searching over at Stardot, whilst there are Pi to Econet bridges they are apparently a bit slow and quite expensive.

I agree a project would be great, but it doesn't seem to have happened.

[rubber_jonnie]

Ok then.

This arrived today:

PXL_20231019_105626672.jpg (196.72 KiB) Viewed 963 times

So hopefully over the holidays I can look at getting networking set up on the A5000