Networking and the X16

BruceMcF · Post by **BruceMcF** » Mon Jul 13, 2020 9:36 am

On 7/11/2020 at 5:15 PM, Lorin Millsap said:

We do have shift registers available. The 65c22 shift registers do in fact work properly.

The description of the preliminary User Port only listed one shift register as available.

Lorin Millsap · Post by **Lorin Millsap** » Mon Jul 13, 2020 11:07 am

The description of the preliminary User Port only listed one shift register as available.

Sorry. You are correct. The other shift register is in the other VIA and it is not available.

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peapod · Post by **peapod** » Mon Jul 13, 2020 12:23 pm

in the same thought process as @TomXP411 swiftlink nomination, adding https://lallafa.de/blog/amiga-projects/plipbox/ which is effectively a parallel port to arduino with a RJ45 shield allowing an Amiga to get online. Would need the driver and TCP/IP stack writing if not already present, additionally converting from the current parallel port to expansion bus.

TomXP411 · Post by **TomXP411** » Tue Jul 14, 2020 4:04 am

15 hours ago, peapod said:

in the same thought process as @TomXP411 swiftlink nomination, adding https://lallafa.de/blog/amiga-projects/plipbox/ which is effectively a parallel port to arduino with a RJ45 shield allowing an Amiga to get online. Would need the driver and TCP/IP stack writing if not already present, additionally converting from the current parallel port to expansion bus.

I was actually thinking about Plipbox, as well. The only problem with Plipbox is that it requires network drivers on the computer. If you drop the network drivers into the microcontroller, then you can just treat it like a modem, and things are much simpler.

Andre · Post by **Andre** » Wed Jul 15, 2020 10:02 pm

There are TCP/IP drivers available for the 6502. GeckOS has one (assembler), and uIP (in C) is working even better.

BruceMcF · Post by **BruceMcF** » Thu Jul 16, 2020 2:09 am

On 7/13/2020 at 8:23 PM, peapod said:

in the same thought process as @TomXP411 swiftlink nomination, adding https://lallafa.de/blog/amiga-projects/plipbox/ which is effectively a parallel port to arduino with a RJ45 shield allowing an Amiga to get online. Would need the driver and TCP/IP stack writing if not already present, additionally converting from the current parallel port to expansion bus.

I am not 100% sure that the User Port is compatible with an EPP parallel port, since in EPP STROBE is R/W ... but plip is compatible with original parallel ports, so a plip interface could be implemented directly on the User Port.

BruceMcF · Post by **BruceMcF** » Thu Jul 16, 2020 2:28 am

On 7/3/2020 at 2:30 PM, BruceMcF said:

... Why it wouldn't be an option for the CX16 main board is in addition to being surface mount, it's a SPI/I2C part (at that scale pins cost more money than the silicon to include slave serial buses), so with Vera having no pins to use for multiple selects to share with the SD card bus, it just doesn't fit for the reference design. ...

Note in an expansion board context, mouser still has over 100 of the through-hole +5v version.

TomXP411 · Post by **TomXP411** » Thu Jul 16, 2020 10:31 am

I've looked over the User port, and I also think it could support Plip, but I don't think writing a TCP/IP stack for 6502 is the smart play.

I've also come up with a design for a parallel interface that works with the User port and an Arduino. The Arduino can act as a bridge to an ESP232 device, a Raspberry Pi, or an Ethernet terminal server. Short version is that with 14 pins, we can do full flow control, port selection, and even read the status pins on a DE9 or DB25 serial port. The actual design is very similar to SIO, but with 8 bits instead of 1, so the Commander can communicate with an attached device at something like 500KBytes/sec (if the external device can keep up), although I'd probably select a more sedate polling rate of around 25 per econd. That's more than enough to keep up with a 115,200bps serial connection, and a decent read/write buffer will keep things operating smoothly.

TheUnknownDad · Post by **TheUnknownDad** » Thu Jan 07, 2021 12:04 pm

I am currently in the process of deciding to make an expansion port card using an ESP32 as a network base. If anyone is up to help us - any help especially on the hardware parts is greatly appreciated.

My dream is, that Dave could actually connect the Commander to networks from day 1. This would obviously be a major benefit at launch for the machine.

Actually, we could use this project to make some kind of hardware development example. Hard- and software are thought to be open source. (See

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