exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

One thing is apparent, myself and @Icky are struggling to make any significant progress with the H5 addons simply due to not enough hours in the day.

One thing I want to bring to the H5 platform is a proper LAN port. EtherNEC / netusbee "work" on the cartridge port with basically iffy hacks in the software as the cartridge port doesn't have Read/Write etc.

So my plan is to simply use a 68k expansion port and build a suitable LAN circuit there. It would need some tweaks to the driver to make proper use of the 68k bus.

So if anyone can take on this project then please do. Indeed anyone can do addons for the H5 and if proven and verified , they could likely make it onto a future incarnation on the H5 series.

Edit:

No feking pi rubbish either. Proper realtec LAN chip! :)

Wireless seems more practical to me because otherwise you're going to have to cut your case somehow to add the LAN port?

There used to be 16-bit Prism Wifi chips used extensively in the Amiga world (with 680x0 drivers)

OR perhaps something using an ESP8266? I'm not familiar with the limitations of the Atari ST's serial port, perhaps it is too limited?

Starting point?

https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=28840

BW

Badwolf wrote: 28 Nov 2022 10:12 Starting point?

Not heard of that project but that would have been great for my Falcon. Seems like the guy abandon the project after killing his Falcon though :roll:

exxos wrote: 28 Nov 2022 10:25 Not heard of that project but that would have been great for my Falcon. Seems like the guy abandon the project after killing his Falcon though :roll:

I think he fixed the Falcon but couldn't sell his boards at a price that made sense for him, so stopped.

I think the source is published on that thread.

BW

Badwolf wrote: 28 Nov 2022 10:40 I think he fixed the Falcon but couldn't sell his boards at a price that made sense for him, so stopped.

I think the source is published on that thread.

I didn't see the source, but did see he wanted $200 for a board. Certainly not unreasonable for the amount of work which likely went into it. But in this line of work you generally don't get paid for your time anyway.Getting your money back on the project is tough enough. In Atari land as soon as you get around £50-£100 people REALLY have to want something to pay for it, like the CT60 to fork out money... But anyway getting sidetracked..

I think it would just be better to go back to the original EtherNEC sources as at least it is a more known starting point. I do think there was issues here and there which were likely solved in netusbee ( cannot remember if sources for that were published or not?) .

But anyway, me personally will likely be several years before I actually have any time to start the project myself. I have a endless amount of stalled projects at the moment already :(

Here's the source.

Some of my earlier thoughts were to abuse the FPU socket on DFB1 for expansions such as wifi or whathaveyou.

So many ideas, so little time. Possibly even less talent!

BW

Badwolf wrote: 28 Nov 2022 11:10 Here's the source.

Thanks.

Badwolf wrote: 28 Nov 2022 11:10 So many ideas, so little time. Possibly even less talent!

Similar problem here.

alexh wrote: 28 Nov 2022 09:49 Wireless seems more practical to me because otherwise you're going to have to cut your case somehow to add the LAN port?

There used to be 16-bit Prism Wifi chips used extensively in the Amiga world (with 680x0 drivers)

OR perhaps something using an ESP8266? I'm not familiar with the limitations of the Atari ST's serial port, perhaps it is too limited?

If the idea is to go wireless, there is a very early version of Fujinet for the ST being discussed on the Fujinet Discord (https://discord.gg/m95y85B2) at the moment. This would avoid cutting any case (it uses ACSI port) and enable usage of some modern protocols.

Oh yes, I still have that adapter at home. For plain Falcon it is a great addon, reaching about 200 KB/s transfer rate.