MiSTer FPGA Forum

So... Here's a thought I had: Why haven't we implemented the ethernet card?

Not the whole ethernet card. Just enough of it to send the bytes of the packet up to the linux (where the ppp serial is going, if you're wondering). We should be able to then have the linux bridge the packet onto the lan. If we can do the full bridge, then the Amiga can have it's own IP. If we are doing a "hacked" bridged lan --- we might have to adopt the MAC address of the DE10 or the wifi card (wifi bridge is slightly harder, but only slightly).

There are probably other cores that would benefit from the linux side of this ... at least the 486... if not some of the later consoles.

I think the ethernet chipset that C= used is well documented. We should be able to do this without too much fuss ... and so much benefit.

Is anyone working on this (I'll happily join) ... or is this my thing to master?

I also thought about this. Probably the way to go would be to adapt the A314 ethernet solution.

https://github.com/niklasekstrom/a314

That project was also was the inspiration for the shared file system.

I was thinking, actually, of just using the exact register layout of the existing AMINET ethernet card that C= sold. The advantage is that you'd only be doing the FPGA and linux development --- no local development. In the end, you can have "cards" autoconfig onto an A500 or A1200 --- even though they only had edge connectors (or not? IDK on the 1200). We already have things autoconfig (picasso? I also see something listed when I list the devices ...)

I'll bow to peer pressure of other developers, but avoiding the Amiga device driver development is potentially avoiding the least well documented portion of the project. Was the AMINET card flakey at all? Usually these old cards are simply "poke the address and length of packet into the register and interrupt when you're done" for sending and receiving. I'm thinking NE2000 style --- a lot of cards worked in that manner back then.

There is allready a soloution via the type of the Uart Mode. I link a short Video from Spain.

https://youtu.be/-sOf0dBiiF0

There was the discussion:
http://retrowiki.es/viewtopic.php?t=200037892

So I'm not sure if proper driver support for an A2065 is worth it at all. Internet with the Amiga is no real fun even on a 68060 system these days.

But what I personally tried a long time ago was RDesktop for the Amiga. This went surprisingly well and basically brings a PC Windows desktop into an Amiga window. In this window you can of course also use the Internet of the Windows computer. This also solved the browser problem directly.
https://www.dfstudios.co.uk/articles/am ... ops-amiga/

The UART solution is pretty slow (~ 10kB/s) compared to real cards for Amigas (~ 100kB/s), so there is some justification to work on this. I see no extra value in implementing real hardware for network access, since a driver is needed in any way. Therefore going the A314 route seems to be the most efficient.

R4M wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 6:46 pm

The UART solution is pretty slow (~ 10kB/s)

You can double it https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_M ... connection

thera34 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 7:59 pm

R4M wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 6:46 pm

The UART solution is pretty slow (~ 10kB/s)

You can double it https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_M ... connection

Or you can multiply it by at least ten ... or more. Really... using the UART, the Amiga works hard for every byte. Using an ethernet or frame based transfer, you get the whole frame in one bulk transfer.

R4M wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 6:46 pm

The UART solution is pretty slow (~ 10kB/s) compared to real cards for Amigas (~ 100kB/s), so there is some justification to work on this. I see no extra value in implementing real hardware for network access, since a driver is needed in any way. Therefore going the A314 route seems to be the most efficient.

Urm... Well... The A2065 has drivers. If we emulate the chip's registers, we get that for free. Looking this up, it's an AMD lance ethernet --- BSD's le driver talks to it. But the Amiga driver is here for the usage.

Obviously, the "trick" is instead of doing all the things to play with the transceiver, we simply blat the bytes over to the other side.

Considering the UART solution just stops working for me after a while and the only way I know of to get it working again is to wipe everything and start over, I'd sure appreciate an alternative. And if it's faster, that's a very nice bonus.

Honestly, I'm looking at sorg porting the Megadrive again but from scanned(!) hardware chips and wonder if there's a possibility for a new Amiga core, maybe one designed with the MiSTer in mind rather than the port from MiST (which I still have full respect for).

I'm not sharp on the history of the core so I could be so wrong here...

zBeeble wrote: ↑Fri Jul 14, 2023 4:14 am

Urm... Well... The A2065 has drivers. If we emulate the chip's registers, we get that for free. Looking this up, it's an AMD lance ethernet --- BSD's le driver talks to it. But the Amiga driver is here for the usage.

Don't forget about the Novell NE2000 which could also potentially work with ao486. https://aminet.net/package/driver/net/cnetdevice

Th source for the driver is included. I use this driver with my A1200 (PCMCIA) and also used it with a PCI NE2000 with G-REXX PCI bus.

NE2000 clones were very popular, inexpensive and well supported.

Trezzer wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 9:25 pm

Considering the UART solution just stops working for me after a while and the only way I know of to get it working again is to wipe everything and start over, I'd sure appreciate an alternative. And if it's faster, that's a very nice bonus.

That has never happened to me in 4 years of owning two MiSTer systems using RoadShow and Miami DX stack...

Also, "wipe everything and start over" seems like a poor approach to understanding and fixing a reoccurring problem...

How do you know this would not also happen for you with ethernet as well?

R4M wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 6:46 pm

The UART solution is pretty slow (~ 10kB/s) compared to real cards for Amigas (~ 100kB/s), so there is some justification to work on this. I see no extra value in implementing real hardware for network access, since a driver is needed in any way. Therefore going the A314 route seems to be the most efficient.

Just a small rant on UART...
In my experience, the UART solution using RTS/CTS flow control is buggy in the recent versions, so switching to xonxoff flow control on both ends works ok (no more broken uploads). Additionally, setting both ends to 230400 makes it somewhat more usable.

german_user wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 8:51 am

There is allready a soloution via the type of the Uart Mode. I link a short Video from Spain.

https://youtu.be/-sOf0dBiiF0

There was the discussion:
http://retrowiki.es/viewtopic.php?t=200037892

So I'm not sure if proper driver support for an A2065 is worth it at all. Internet with the Amiga is no real fun even on a 68060 system these days.

But what I personally tried a long time ago was RDesktop for the Amiga. This went surprisingly well and basically brings a PC Windows desktop into an Amiga window. In this window you can of course also use the Internet of the Windows computer. This also solved the browser problem directly.
https://www.dfstudios.co.uk/articles/am ... ops-amiga/

Whilst you won’t have fun browsing on an Amiga the ability to do FTP, maybe irc and point to point comms might be useful.

Or online updates built into say the AGS image. Or transferring things off your lan.

But yeah web browser - nowhere near enough power.

bbond007 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 02, 2023 1:29 am

That has never happened to me in 4 years of owning two MiSTer systems using RoadShow and Miami DX stack...

Also, "wipe everything and start over" seems like a poor approach to understanding and fixing a reoccurring problem...

How do you know this would not also happen for you with ethernet as well?

Oh, I agree. It's not like I didn't spend time on troubleshooting first as per this thread. But if a full reinstall of the system fixes the issue, and it stops working again without me having made any changes on the Amiga side, I can only assume I'm running into an obscure bug or it is triggered by something in the updates. I have no ideas of what to test next, so my Minimig lies dormant (it is of little interest to me without networking).

And I don't know. I just hope, really, because everything else works fine.

throAU wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 11:21 pm

Whilst you won’t have fun browsing on an Amiga the ability to do FTP, maybe irc and point to point comms might be useful.

Or online updates built into say the AGS image. Or transferring things off your lan.

But yeah web browser - nowhere near enough power.

With WRP you can browse lots of things from Amigas. Even more relevant, you have sites catering to old browsers these days like 68k news, frog find, the old web and so on. The old browsers are more usable today than they have been for a long time.

Don't forget about https://aminet.net/

It is quite nice to download utilities and whatnot straight to your MiniMig. Works quite well - even on a 020 CPU.

Hi everyone !

Would love to get my Amiga or MiSTer (when I get another one) online for Aquabyss (new online Amiga game) and IMP (Infinity Modules Player). Two contemporary essentials In my memory UART was too slow / unreliable

cheers !