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1.70 Mhz 8-Bit Ataris Get 10 Mbit Ethernet

Posted by simoniker on from the next-up-firewire dept.

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."

8 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. 1.70 Mhz?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    1.70? I think you mean 1.79 Mhz. Geez-us. :-P

    1. Re:1.70 Mhz?? by reddish · · Score: 5, Funny

      1.79 MHz? I take it you mean 1.7897725 MHz (NTSC models) or 1.773447 MHz (PAL-models)... Sjeeesh! :-)

  2. Re:I'm Sorry, but ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "If you have to ask why, you are not in the target audience"

  3. Atari NIC by ndavidg · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now you can have multi-player pong LAN parties.

  4. Not perfect yet by Martigan80 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!)
  5. It's called a HOBBY by Pizaz · · Score: 5, Insightful
    some people build scale replica plastic models, and others like to do new things with old hardware.

    To each his own...

    -PizaZ

  6. never really thought about this before... by Malor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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. :-)

  7. Don't laugh ! by Ignis+Flatus · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.