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1.70 Mhz 8-Bit Ataris Get 10 Mbit Ethernet
point writes "Thanks to Chris Martin, 8-bit Atari power users can now enjoy 10 Mbit Ethernet, something that the Commodore 64 crowd have been able to do for over a year now... Time to pick up that age-old flamewar? An Ethernet-enabled Atari port of the Contiki operating system has already been completed, and brings the Atari users telnet, e-mail, a web server and a web browser. Pictures and schematics for the Ethernet card, as well as screenshots of the system in action on an Atari 800 are available from the project's webpage."
Why?
I mean? Why not just emulate it on a decent pc?
I suppose this is one thing I will never get used to.
Posting anon in case I actually get first post, and I don't wanna get modded down just for that.
I hope somebody figures out a way to connect networking hardware to the Nintendo Entertainment System so that yet another old 8-bit platform's port of Contiki can get net support.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I am actually looking to get the ethernet card for the Commodore 64 and run Contiki. Should be fun .... even better when a solid version of Wings gets nicely completed to handle it all.
Then I can hack an Atari 8-bit webserver with my C64!
But come on, we all know the C64 was way better than the atari... at least the C64 has hard drives to host files off. There's no way I'm using the 300 baud datasette.
"Are you keeping up with the Commodore? Because the Commodore is keeping up with you."
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
due to massive outsourcing to Craplackistan, American IT workers are drowning in a deluge of free time that demands biblical comparisons.
1.70? I think you mean 1.79 Mhz. Geez-us. :-P
that their website is not hosted on one of those. It would be a pity for all that hard work to go up in flames. (literally)
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Now you can have multi-player pong LAN parties.
Three words: Internet Star Raiders.
http://saveie6.com/
Yeah, that would be cool. The easiest solution we've been able to come up with for communication would run through the controller port to a host program on the PC. There's posts about it on the nesdev.parodius.com forums. But I'm not sure if that can work with Contiki, maybe it can somehow?
I'd like to find out. I've got the commucication schematic already, it just needs to be tested. My kingdom for a devcart! heheh.
If anyone has any ideas, or is just interested, feel free to stop by the NES hardware forum.
-Memblers
Wonder what will be next...
A) Atari: 1024 ST.
B) Tandy: Color Computer { 1,2 or 3 }. Use OS9 or MS Basic as OS.
C) SWTP SS50 bus computer.
D) Smoke Signal Broadcasting: Chiftan.
E) Coleco: Gamesystem.
F) Coleco: Adam { If you can keep it running ).
Actualy its not the final results but the knowledge to get it going at all. Be fun to try!
Current Status:
# Compiling: Contiki, UIP, CS8900A driver, Telnet, Email, Web Browser.
# The Telnet only version works under SpartaDOS.
# Pings work, but many packets dropped.
# Telnet works, but looses connection.
So there is still a way to go. They have a work in progress but are not fully up.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
dust off my old Atari 800.
Retro cool here I come.
siggy played guitar
The reason is that most people have no new ideas for projects, so they just port the same old technologies to every piece of equipment imaginable. (My toaster runs Linux!!1!)
To each his own...
-PizaZ
The Gnome people should take a look at it.
D) Smoke Signal Broadcasting: Chiftan.
Would the TCP/IP stack running on smoke be compatible with IP v. 6?
A very big hammer ... bam bang hit...
That ought to take care of that computer being so slow.
10Mbit ethernet on an Atari 800.. A single ping would almost DoS it..
We'll see a CERT alert on this for sure!
-- Jim.
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
Don't you guys get it!? This means we can have a beawouaoulf cluster of Ataris!!!1!
The unofficial
Frankly, I'm addicted to this whole idea of putting new features and software on old hardware. I think it was when I realized for myself for the first time that you could do cool stuff like going to a thrift store like Salvation Army and picking up some really old electronics, and still do something useful with it. Props to these guys. Time to get back to my Linux-enabled PS2.
The Atari ST has had web browser software for some time. It's called the Crystal Atari Browser.
I guess this would be the place to ask, since I haven't had any luck with Google.
Where would I get an 8-bit ISA network card that's supported in Linux? I've got a couple of Netgear NE2000 cards that were advertised to work in 8-bit slots, but the drivers don't seem to recognize them.
I'm definitely not a hardware hacker, so I'd be grateful for any hints.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
There is no way that you can tell me everything you do for fun is USEFULL to the world.
Have you tried Linux yet?
Does this mean a networked version of M*U*L*E would finally become possible? Sweet!
It just occurred to me, with the "10 mbit Ethernet" reference in the title, that it would be harder than hell (impossible?) to push that much data on one of those 8 bit computers.
:-)
:-)
Assuming you're using only the processor, on an 8-bit machine the data speed ought to be very close to the clock speed; a 1Mhz machine probably could copy no more than 1 megabit, and that's assuming that it was doing NOTHING else, like interacting with the user.
Now, the Ataris have early versions of the some of the custom chips that were in the Amiga, so it's likely that at least some of the load might be able to be offset, but I'd be pretty amazwd if the machines could exceed 2 megabits.
Honestly, everything past a modem is probably overkill on these old machines; it's like putting tires and shocks to do 200mph on a Model T. No matter how hard you push down the pedal, it's just not going to go much faster.
It really puts things in perspective, though; I'm sitting here typing on my Web browser, downloading a TV episode off Usenet at about 3 megabits, and streaming Doll Revolution off the Mac via iTunes, playing it on a (kinda crummy) 5.1 surround sound system. And with all that going on, probably 95% of my processor time is going to Folding@Home.
Goddamn, what a difference a few decades make.
Now what's the use of that?Could the dark brain matter which was wasted on this (cough cough ) technolical feat have been not used for some other purpose? Those guys will end up adding Ethernet interface to IBM 360s and Univacs!!!
Du kan glomma dina ensama stunder, du kan lita paa teknikens under - Wilmer X
This kind of stuff is what would have happened if Microsoft and IBM had not destroyed "choice" back in the day.
Wouldn't it be cool if Commodore and Atari and Texas Instruments made some kinda comeback. The internet was a web of completly different platforms all talking via internet standards. Amigas, Macs and OS2 machines. No Linux/Unix vrs Microsoft.
I hope this kinda stuff continues. Even if it is just for fun.
--ken
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
My Poly-88 now supports 5.25 floppies
That's an insightful thing to be said by a guy with a +1 karma bonus on Slashdot...
I think that we're all grateful that the grandparent's constant masturbation keeps him from expending his foul seed in a more reproductive manner. Hence FUN (the grandparent's)==USEFUL, (to society as a whole). At least in this particular somewhat distasteful case.
One day you guys will be all excited to see that someone has built a subspace carrier-frequency card for the PCI bus and ported a neural-interface OS to the PC.
A lot of people like to ask "WHY?" when it comes to technology. But these little gizmos, which still work amazingly, answer a different question, "Why not?" Why not play with the old stuff?
WiFi on your favorite TI calculator?
Hmm, telnet. Clear-text passwords and all that. But it would be insane to try porting ssh to such a machine. So is there any way to get secure remote logins?
Perhaps you could generate a 100-kilobyte file of random data, get a copy of it at either end somehow (does this Atari have disk drives? maybe even put the file on tape heh heh) and use it as a one-time pad for remote connections.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I never knew that chris martin from coldplay was so retro-cool!
...can't even do that. (Can't find where to stick the ethernet card).
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Have you upgraded to the l8est q3?
;)
mine doesn't ask for no stinking license key to play in multiplayer.
Have a look at and/or try Contiki. It lacks SO much functionality that a modern OS has. Any comparisons aren't worth much.
this "joke" has been discontinued. All use of Duke Nukem Forever, in this context, has been replaced by Stars! Supernova Genesis. That is all.
You may now continue with your regularly scheduled trolling.
Damn, we have ethernet for the C-64, Atari and even lightbulbs, but I still cant get my old A500 or A2000 on the 'net. Oh sure, I could dig up a really old, crappy Ariadne II board off of eBay for $500, but what's the point in that? I want something like this for the Amiga.
:)
Come on, it's got enought power to do something like this and you wouldn't have to build the GUI or OS - just the hardware.
Oh well, I guess a man can dream.
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
Do you know Amiga 1200 with 12MHZ CPU - from user's feel side of view - felt WAY faster than 486/80MHZ with twice as much RAM?
Why? Better architecture. Not only CPU but whole computer. I can imagine employing the gfx chipset for such a work. It can move data between ports and memory at amazing (comparing to the CPU) speeds, fill large areas of memory with specific values, move memory areas etc. Without taking CPU time and without even the CPU waiting (so CPU may do its own stuff while GFX chipset does its own.
Let's make a very rough count...
10Mbps with traffic overhead of Ethernet etc (all that is stripped on hardware) is about 1 Mbyte/s. With 64K of RAM, it's about 0.064s to fill whole RAM. Assume screen frequency of 50HZ, gives 0.02s/frame. Transfer of 20K/frame required. For the CPU - way too much. For ANTIC (the gfx chip) - acceptable amounts I think...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Well, not really, the LANceGS has been available for over three years. It works with an Enhanced ][e or IIgs, although there are no apps for the ][e that use the interface. FWIW, Apple had created an ethernet card for the IIgs to be released with System 6 (GS/OS) but killed it at the last minute so as to not have the IIgs compete with the Macintosh LC.
-- Charles A. Plater
looks like the mods are on crack again.
The parent post makes a valid point.
Assuming you're using only the processor, on an 8-bit machine the data speed ought to be very close to the clock speed; a 1Mhz machine probably could copy no more than 1 megabit, and that's assuming that it was doing NOTHING else, like interacting with the user.
Interresting logic. A poor old Z80 running at modest 4MHz was able to move, using a DMA companion chip, quite exactly 1MByte/s (4MHz, 4 clock cycles/byte). The CPU without any special chip was able to move a byte in 21 cycles (via LDIR command) from memory to memory (up to 64kByte block size) or from memory to I/O port (via OTIR command) or from I/O port to memory at the same speed, but only max. 256 byte in one go. That's max. 190 kByte/s.
Of course those are absolute maximum throughputs, but you could always crank up the frequency to 8MHz (more on later models). Saturating Ethernet is thus impossible without DMA chip, but not difficult with such help. And most 'good' computers had a DMA chip for things like hard disk.
Atari Rulez... Color Sucks on the C64 :0
We could have a beowulf cluster of these things now!
How many slashes would a slashdot dot, if a slashdot could dot slashes?
Let's go guys, keep this ball rolling!
Achille Talon
Hop!
Let's do the math together, kiddies:
1.79 MHz CPU, and 8 bits per cycle, yields 14.32 Mb/s
Ethernet cards of 10Mb/s also are rated for thier peak theoretical rate on a 100% loaded network with no colisions.
So, just here there appears to be that the unit could likely perform adequately (for really, really old technology).
And, perhaps this is a real performance-freak that did this, so the old Atari could even be overclocked to, let's say, 1.83Mhz! ;)
Too bad Windows XP will require activation and shut down 30 days into the project.
I conforms to the spec and can interoperate with 10 Mb Ethernet. Just cause you arent using the full 10 megabits (hardly anyone does anyway) doesnt mean you can't interoperate.
What about that goofy "expansion port" they have in the base of the NES? I can only fathom a guess that it was designed with the intent of releasing an unreleased disk drive (similar to the model released in Japan), designed to connect to the net and store games on said disks.
Maybe that would solve the problem, just need to hack together the communications hardware, RAM and disk drive. Perhaps a visit to eBay or whatnot can obtain the drive and then some reverse engineering can be done.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Oh, it's simple, it's because you're an idiot.
The Atari joins the commode 64 in the ethernet department, and yet still no one has come up with a homemade ethernet adapter for the dreamcast, whose BBA (when available) runs over $100. Atari: 1.7(9...) MHz. Dreamcast: 200MHz, with a cdrom. Come on, people.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, but apart from the sucky color, slow floppy drives, nasty printer, slow CPU, crippled 6502 assembly language, limited embedded BASIC, slow tape drives, and the occasional explosion, the C64 was a great machine.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Well sure, cluster 2 thousand of those bad boys and you'd have a sauna... oh, and a real computer. I still dont see the point, some hobbies are better left, not hobbies. Why not do something useful, like program your clock radio with linux. or your remote control. Something people use :P
The more stories I see like this the more I realize hacking into the alien technology with the little laptop in the movie Independence Day really wasn't so silly after all... :)
The first thing I thought when reading this article was why? Then I thought why do I still have an Atari 800, Amiga 500 and 486-33 in my closet? Although I will never go to the trouble to get my Atari online, I think it would be cool to get my old, original Gameboy online, Any possibilities there?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Kind of like when Bud tried to teach Kelly geography (or somesuch thing)
Al: Wow Bud, that's great!
Bud: Well, there's a problem. You know what happens when you pour a gallon of milk into a shot glass?
Doorbell: ding dong
Kelly: What was that???
An On
When will someone finish porting Contiki to the Apple II and write a LANceGS driver for it?
It was actually a port for a modem for online lottery services. It didn't come out due to fears of hacking.
Part of the allure of older hardware is just that, the hardware..
You cant emulate the 'feel' of a working ST.. its just not the same watching GEM poke along in a window as it is to really have it in front of you...
( yes i know this was about 8 bit atari, but you get my point )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I dont need any of that, I have my Commodore Amiga 500!!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
The Atari ST's were a completely different line of computers. Comparing an ST to the 8-bit Atari's (400, 800, 1200, XL, XE, etc, etc) is very similar to comparing an Amiga to the C-64.
I think there actually are emulators of sorts that play 8-bit stuff on the ST's, but the reverse is definitely not doable.
I just got an Atari 800 off eBay a few weeks ago. *sweet*
Oh, I forgot - I was gonna gut it for another project. Guess I'll have to get another. Good thing they're cheap!
The world is tragically overpopulated with humans. They may not be directly helping out, but at least they aren't trying to distribute vaccines or dig wells or build more housing or anything terrible like that, so lighten up!
Besides, this project doesn't really affect much. Once they get 100Mbit on the 800 though, then my ears will perk up.
I have taught my pet rock to play dead.
1.79 MHz CPU, and 8 bits per cycle, yields 14.32 Mb/s
You must've missed the part about Ethernet being a serial protocol.
How is it going to grab 8 bits at a time in one clock cycle when there is only one bit coming down the wire at that time? It can't process more than one bit per clock cycle because the second bit wouldn't have arrived yet.
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
The ethernet PHY will be running at 10MHz, 1 bit/cycle.
The bus interface will be running at 1.79MHz (or some multiple/fraction thereof), at 8 bits in parallel.
Assuming good buffering, you could very easily saturate an 8 bit 1.79MHz bus with the output from a 10MHz serial line (which is essentially all that ethernet's PHY is.)
You're doing it wrong.
If you do this it is like kissing $5 goodbye.
First order of business: locate network ascii porn
I'm thinking that the logical solution to the dropped packets would be to try to stuff some kind of processing in as a display list interrupt.
I'm also pretty sure Contiki isn't optimized for the Atari's architecture. It's designed to be portable. I don't know at what rate it services the TCP/IP connection but it should be done at least once every frame in a vertical blank interrupt.
Whilst newer hardware obviously has the speed advantage, there are some blessing to older hardware. The main one I can see is heat. Processors have become faster, yes, but heat-dissipation efficiency hasn't really come to where it should.
Now, while an Atari might be a step too far back for many practical applications (maybe you could use it as a relay-to-internet for some form of telegraph info though?) in looking at my older PC's there were no fans, and not much of a heatsink either. For my MMX233, it was running as a server with a
So situations where noise needs to be minimal, and heat equally so, modifying older systems to run semi-current technology might be useful. After all, there is a lot you can do with a "not-quite-dumb" terminal, but getting hardware to work on them is another story.
Maybe you need a computer that has one task, to display a little information and maybe have a submissal button/form, but it needs to interact with more modern machines. I think that in this case, an old Atari with an ethernet cable would shine through very nicely: low power consumption and little noise.
Okay, I gave it that title in the spirit of the old flame war...
In reality, I owned and loved both a C64 and an Atari 800(48k baby!), but I really did hate/loath/despise that C64 keyboard(not to mention that cartridge slot, ugh). The Atari 800 keyboard was much better, which I think was the real reason I enjoyed programming on it so much more. There's just something about a snappy response in a keyboard that is more enjoyable than that sensation of pressing down on keys that feel like they're suspended in oatmeal.
Not to mention, and this is up for debate, but the arcade ports on the Atari just felt more like the arcade for me. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, DigDug, etc... Were all more enjoyable for me on the 800. Though games like Ulitma IV were much more enjoyable on the C64. IMHO.
One thing that ticked me off about the 800... I really hated that I had to go out and buy a Basic cartridge. I saved up all that paper route money and allowance for 6 months and bought my computer, only to find I could do little more than type up memos. Luckily, Grandpa, the good HAM he was, sympathized, and picked up the bill for the Basic cartridge the next day.
I'm going to download me an emulator, I miss the good ole days...
nuff said...
It's either I have fun or I destroy the world. Therefore, everything I do for fun is not only usefull, but neccesary for the survival of our planet.
You forgot mushy keyboard and crappy catridge slot...
quite odd, they've developed it for everything from the vic-20 to the Nintendo, to the Co-co, wonder why they don't have it for the TIc? Oh, that's right.. It must be because the TI-99/4a has a 16 bit processor, and it's only for 8 bit systems.. (yes folks, the TI was the first 16 bit 'Home Computer' but due to bad coding, Bad marketing, (sorry Bill Cosby) and the fear of loss of money, it never went far with TI, but just check out the following, (including a 32 bit upgrade path) Myarc9640
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Every time somebody mentions running somthing new on somthing old, or not meant for it, SOMEBODY mentions Hey! Let's Cluster them!
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(can we put this to a vote, or somthing to add that option?)
Ack!
BTC
It can grab 8 bits in one cycle because it's a super-atari that can predict future bits. Who's going to use an Atari with ethernet anyway? *cough* Get a real computer and stop living in the 80's *cough*
Bear in mind that thanks to inflation, UKP1000 from 1980-ish is worth goodness knows how much! I think I may have heard that a TRS80 cost something like UKP 2000 back in 1981. My god we were hardcore back in those days!
"-1 Flamebait" M2'ed Fair. Serves you right!
(moral: Don't stick your karma in flamewars, no matter how old and how dead they look if you don't want it burnt)
Know your roots!