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CC65 is nice because it lets you mix C and assembler freely. Plus the C alone is pretty fast.
Action! is great for on-atari development, as is Forth and Turbo-basic.
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danwinslow
Member Since 9 Mar 2005OFFLINE Last Active May 11 2012 11:23 AM
Posts I've Made
In Topic: Atari 8-bit Ethernet and Contiki - Want your help!
Tue Sep 13, 2011 11:31 AM
What you say is true enough, although since this design works and most importantly is actually available I feel that its still an exciting cart to have. Contiki works, and so does my C stack, although its true its not the fastest thing in the world. There's some question in my mind as to how fast it needs to be, really, given the overall speed limitations of the atari. It's not really reasonable in my opinion to expect to browse web pages, although that may change given things like vbxe and so forth. My personal goal is to able to send UDP packets to support internet games between two ataris, and I think I am pretty close to that now. For instance, slaved to VBI, a 256 byte udp packet every 60th of a second can support a pretty good update rate. Things like chat programs and telnet and possibly FTP should work well too. In the case of FTP, its kind of useless to send faster than the atari can write anyways.
The cart is very easy to program for, and I expect that people will write much faster drivers than what I am doing.
We're all for people doing other designs, I say the more the better. We picked this design because it was in our abilities to do relatively quickly.
The cart is very easy to program for, and I expect that people will write much faster drivers than what I am doing.
We're all for people doing other designs, I say the more the better. We picked this design because it was in our abilities to do relatively quickly.
Curt Vendel, on Tue Sep 13, 2011 10:15 AM, said:
Pontus is a great guy, he's actually helping me with the CPLD work on the 7800XM
That module is fine and all, but that is basically the same design we used back in I think 2003 or so when I first started the whole "Ethercart" project for the 8bits... here is the issue, using that design is do hardware intense on the system, you need to go with an IP controller that handles everything up to the Application Layer so your code is only talking to the device application to application... the IP protocol, all of the network, protocol, hardware and so forth layers of networking ALL need to be handled by the ethernet controller completely, otherwise the 8bit Atari is killing itself doing all of that work AND then trying to run its network based applications...
I forget the chip, Metalguy told it to me the other night, perhaps he could post the controller chip here - netwiz or something to that effect, would do the job perfectly.
I would send invector an e-mail and ask about the availability of the IP Dragon II boards. He has been a good guy to deal withso far. http://www.invector.se/contact.asp I think he has some now, but If not, send me a PM and I will see what I can do. As far as a single sided board, that might not be possible because the Cart needs signals from BOTH sides of the cartridge slot, so you need to etch the card edge on both sides. I suppose it might be possible to just etch the card edge and use jumpers for the rest of the connections on the bottom side of the board, but for all that work, IMHO, you might as well just etch both sides. Making a two sided board is not as hard as it might seem. I have done it several times. this is very similar to the method I use: http://myweb.cableon...wheedal/pcb.htm A clothes iron can work in place of the laminator for smaller boards, such as the ethernet cart, but sometimes takes a few tries till the toner doesn't smear. The only other issue is soldering the header pins on both sides of the board because home etching doesn't give you plated through holes. I just keep the headers raised a little above the board so I can get solder under the plastic that holds the pins. I also just use some bits of bare wire if I need to make a via to complete a path from the bottom to top layer. There are a couple of those on my board design.
If you do decide to build one, let me know how it goes and feel free to e-mail or PM me for help.
I think the price will be quite reasonable. At this point I don't think the price will excede $70.00 for a finished cart in a machined case with a professional label.
That module is fine and all, but that is basically the same design we used back in I think 2003 or so when I first started the whole "Ethercart" project for the 8bits... here is the issue, using that design is do hardware intense on the system, you need to go with an IP controller that handles everything up to the Application Layer so your code is only talking to the device application to application... the IP protocol, all of the network, protocol, hardware and so forth layers of networking ALL need to be handled by the ethernet controller completely, otherwise the 8bit Atari is killing itself doing all of that work AND then trying to run its network based applications...
I forget the chip, Metalguy told it to me the other night, perhaps he could post the controller chip here - netwiz or something to that effect, would do the job perfectly.
puppetmark, on Sun Jun 26, 2011 10:49 AM, said:
Quote
MY problem is that I and a mate wanted to build your "home-made"-approach with the Dragon-board. However, we couldn't source it.
AND I would prefer a one-PCB solution instead of a the 2PCB + Dragon-board.
AND I would prefer a one-PCB solution instead of a the 2PCB + Dragon-board.
I would send invector an e-mail and ask about the availability of the IP Dragon II boards. He has been a good guy to deal withso far. http://www.invector.se/contact.asp I think he has some now, but If not, send me a PM and I will see what I can do. As far as a single sided board, that might not be possible because the Cart needs signals from BOTH sides of the cartridge slot, so you need to etch the card edge on both sides. I suppose it might be possible to just etch the card edge and use jumpers for the rest of the connections on the bottom side of the board, but for all that work, IMHO, you might as well just etch both sides. Making a two sided board is not as hard as it might seem. I have done it several times. this is very similar to the method I use: http://myweb.cableon...wheedal/pcb.htm A clothes iron can work in place of the laminator for smaller boards, such as the ethernet cart, but sometimes takes a few tries till the toner doesn't smear. The only other issue is soldering the header pins on both sides of the board because home etching doesn't give you plated through holes. I just keep the headers raised a little above the board so I can get solder under the plastic that holds the pins. I also just use some bits of bare wire if I need to make a via to complete a path from the bottom to top layer. There are a couple of those on my board design.
If you do decide to build one, let me know how it goes and feel free to e-mail or PM me for help.
Quote
What I want to say is: I buy one (or two) when somebody builds these 
(It goes without saying, when the price is reasonable)
(It goes without saying, when the price is reasonable)
I think the price will be quite reasonable. At this point I don't think the price will excede $70.00 for a finished cart in a machined case with a professional label.
In Topic: Atari 8-bit Ethernet Cartridge
Tue Sep 13, 2011 7:06 AM
Answer : yes
