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Atari+ethernet?


Darkhog

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I wonder, if there is any mod that allows Atari to connect into Ethernet network. I mean, no one use dial-up anymore and besides it's quite costly. Of course I have no delusions that I will be able to play flash games on A8 ;), but for simple A8 lan parties, it'd be cool to have.

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You can use the MIDI-interface for network gaming. MIDI Maze is already patched for the Atari XL and we played it in a mixed network with Atari XLs and Atari STs. Limit is 16 computers (due to the MIDI specifications), but that should be enough for a nice Atari-meeting. The interface is available from HardwareDoc: http://abbuc.de/~hardwaredoc/projekte/hardware/midi/midimate.html

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Well, I've actually thought of MUD-like game, where PC would be a server and there will be atari clients (for MUDs there are only thin clients needed, even PCs are overkill so Ataris with some simple client software would be more than enough). So yeah, ethernet is a must.

Edited by Darkhog
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Yeah, but I don't talking about TCP/IP stack (which can be done over dial-up and any network connection, even RS232), but HW Ethernet interface mod that would allow Atari connect to PC either via direct link or via router/hub/switch on much higher speeds than dial-up.

Edited by Darkhog
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I do:

- use tips from helpful posts

- thank authors of these posts

- credit them if they helped me with either coding, music, testing or graphics

 

I don't:

- Click on lmgtfy links

- Click on links to google.com (unless it is link to service like GDrive)

- See any posts containing "google it" or similar phrase.

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I don't:

- Click on lmgtfy links

- Click on links to google.com (unless it is link to service like GDrive)

- See any posts containing "google it" or similar phrase.

 

Then you won't find your answer if you don't search for what you're looking for ;)

Do you expect to be hand fed the all the answers to all your questions without a little searching?

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This question comes up, every now and then, and sometimes an enterprising hardware engineer decides to tackle this problem.

 

The first approach often taken, is to directly wire an ethernet transceiver and supporting glue hardware directly to, say, the parallel bus interface, and to drive the ethernet device directly. Then said engineer figures out _very_ quickly, that a 1.77/79MHz 6502 is a wee bit slow even for 10 megabit/s ethernet. There are people who PERSIST on this path, insisting that the proposed solution must be a "pure" one, and that everything must be done by the Atari...Ok, great, now you've implemented this chunk of hardware, and are using ALL of your CPU power JUST to keep up with ethernet packets being slammed to your ethernet port. You haven't even implemented a TCP/IP stack, yet! oh crap, we only have a cunt hair's amount of memory in which to realistically DO this....shit.... it is often at this point that the engineer fades into obscurity, toiling away at it, promising that the ethernet device will be available "any day now" ....

 

The second approach, involves abstracting the ENTIRE ethernet section behind a faster processor and dedicated ethernet hardware, and providing a DMA bridge to shove buffers over into main memory for further processing. This helps, and I've seen a number of designs proposed that use this technique, a great many of them doing TCP/IP on the hardware, and offloading everything as much as possible...But to this day, I haven't seen something actually available...

 

The third approach, is to connect the Atari to an RS232 interface, and then to an RS232 to ethernet adaptor of some sort, and use terminal programs to do telnet like things...A lot of people are doing this, a lot of people are doing well with this...

 

Take your pick. I know you're wanting to implement a simple network using this, to do useful things, so option 2 may be your only realistic option...

 

-Thom

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There *is* a hardware solution. It's called the dragoncart, and you can find info here :

 

http://www.atari8ethernet.com/

 

It is a cartridge with a cs8900 chip on it, and a small amount of packet buffer, so it matches option 1 of the post above. Although the rest of the commentary in the post about the feasibility is wrong. It works perfectly well with an TCP-IP stack adapted from IP65, and there is plenty of room left over for applications. In fact, I am finishing up a telnet client for it that takes up about 12k of memory, IP stack and all. I have used it against quite a few telnet servers and it works great. There is also a ping client. You can find the source and demo programs in this thread :

 

http://atariage.com/...hl__ dragoncart

 

I am going to continue to develop clients for various IP servers, as well as make a version that hosts the IP stack in extended memory. It is open source, so feel free to use the source. The developer of the cart is PuppetMark here on the forums, and he is gearing up for another run of carts.

 

I personally have about 10 extra carts left over from the original run of 100, and they are available for people who are serious about developing software for it. Please PM me if you are interested.

Edited by danwinslow
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This question comes up, every now and then, and sometimes an enterprising hardware engineer decides to tackle this problem.

 

The first approach often taken, is to directly wire an ethernet transceiver and supporting glue hardware directly to, say, the parallel bus interface, and to drive the ethernet device directly. Then said engineer figures out _very_ quickly, that a 1.77/79MHz 6502 is a wee bit slow even for 10 megabit/s ethernet. There are people who PERSIST on this path, insisting that the proposed solution must be a "pure" one, and that everything must be done by the Atari...Ok, great, now you've implemented this chunk of hardware, and are using ALL of your CPU power JUST to keep up with ethernet packets being slammed to your ethernet port. You haven't even implemented a TCP/IP stack, yet! oh crap, we only have a cunt hair's amount of memory in which to realistically DO this....shit.... it is often at this point that the engineer fades into obscurity, toiling away at it, promising that the ethernet device will be available "any day now" ....

 

Well, I guess I need to weigh in on this. I can tell you that so far, we have accomplished much more than most thought was even possible with a parallel bus Ethernet interface. We also produced over 100 cartridges so far. ( a cartridge actually) We have a very small, efficient, and useful stack running with room left for apps. This has nothing to do with being a "purest" After looking at all available possibilities, it just seemed to be the best option for cost, reproduction, and flexibility with software. Feel free to read about al about it at www.atari8ethernet.com

 

I am not going to get into a debate or argument here, I hate seeing such things fill up a forum. I just wanted to let everyone know the facts about our project.

Edited by puppetmark
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Also, I should mention that an atari version of Contiki runs well on the cartridge, and I believe that the developer is working on further atari relases of the Contiki system.

 

yep! You can browse the web, send simple email messages and use IRC and even twitter. And as soon as the next release is done and tested I will put up a download page for it..

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