danwinslow Posted September 13, 2011 Share Posted September 13, 2011 The label design is still up for submissions. Probably as carts only...although I'll talk to Mark about it and see what he thinks. We aren't planning on charging much over the materials cost so I'm not sure a kit would be significantly cheaper. Probably if you are in a do-it-yourself mood you can use Marks' board design and just do it up yourself. You can get the 5v dragon II's still I think from invector. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
venom4728a Posted September 13, 2011 Share Posted September 13, 2011 I am Interested in 2 also, Please PM me when you are ready. Best Regards Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
puppetmark Posted September 13, 2011 Share Posted September 13, 2011 DId you decide on a label design yet? I have someone who can do nice work I have not decided on a label yet. There weren't any takers on the label contest, so I am open to anyone that want's to help out. Probably as carts only...although I'll talk to Mark about it and see what he thinks. We aren't planning on charging much over the materials cost so I'm not sure a kit would be significantly cheaper. Probably if you are in a do-it-yourself mood you can use Marks' board design and just do it up yourself. You can get the 5v dragon II's still I think from invector. Dan is correct, a kit won't be that much cheaper. However, I should have some spare boards I can sell, and all the parts with the exception of the IP dragon board is available from Mouser.com. I have confirmed the IP dragon boards are still available from invector, just send him an e-mail. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt Vendel Posted September 13, 2011 Share Posted September 13, 2011 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. 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. 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.cableone.net/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. What I want to say is: I buy one (or two) when somebody builds these (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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danwinslow Posted September 13, 2011 Share Posted September 13, 2011 (edited) 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. 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. 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. 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.cableone.net/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. What I want to say is: I buy one (or two) when somebody builds these (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. Edited September 13, 2011 by danwinslow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt Vendel Posted September 14, 2011 Share Posted September 14, 2011 Metalguy got back to me... Here is the module: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9473 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+David_P Posted September 14, 2011 Share Posted September 14, 2011 Alternatively, you could do it off the SIO bus (once this item is back in stock) http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9476 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danwinslow Posted September 15, 2011 Share Posted September 15, 2011 I've tried the SIO bus route, it doesn't work very well. The cartridge works well, and as far as I can tell its fast enough to do anything that the atari can keep up with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
puppetmark Posted September 15, 2011 Share Posted September 15, 2011 (edited) I think it's also important to mention that The heart of the cartridge, the CS8900A, has been used for Ethernet interfaces for both C64 ,Apple and others. In fact, an earlier IP Dragon board was used in the Apple II Ethernet interface. My point is simply that the CS8900A has been battle tested on several 8- bit platforms, works very well and is reasonable to write code for. Dan is very close to having internet game play working, and I don't think I would have thought that was even possible until I came across Chris Martin's early work with the CS8900A. e-mail, twitter, FTP, and IRC, are all possibilities and most have already been proven. Browsing web pages may not be elegant, but that too is possible even now. (see the youtube videos on the project website) I think it would be very cool to have some text-only Websites coded for browsing on the Atari and I plan on doing just that. http://www.atari8ethernet.com/ Edited September 15, 2011 by puppetmark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+David_P Posted September 16, 2011 Share Posted September 16, 2011 Hmm.. do we need to define a new file extension for Atari 8-bit webpages - so designers can use ATASCII graphics, and integrate music with POKEY? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Creature XL Posted September 16, 2011 Share Posted September 16, 2011 Dan is very close to having internet game play working, So and what is left for me to do? I wanted to try network gaming with this thing as well. But, I am not complaining. Go Dan, Go! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
w1k Posted September 16, 2011 Share Posted September 16, 2011 the plain text web pages is good for this a8 browsing.. only plain text, only P tag, nothing more, no divs, css, no web layout.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted September 16, 2011 Share Posted September 16, 2011 Well have 6-24pt fonts in the GUI if that helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+David_P Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 BUMP. Any word on progress? I know there are lots of us with itchy fingers, getting ready to go to PayPal to order... (And a quick thank you to all the folks who've been working so hard on this!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fibrewire Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Please don't assume I am discrediting this amazing project, but how does the ethernet cart compare to the MSS-100 Lantronix External Device Server? And can the Lantronix box do everything the cart can? eBay Auction -- Item Number: 300658168154 http://www.lantronix...ers/mss100.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Isn't the Lantronix going to be limited by the serial bus speed of the A8? The Ethernet cart is a parallel device, so will be ten times faster. Nevertheless - the Lantronix looks interesting. What's required to get that running - just an RS232 interface? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fibrewire Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Isn't the Lantronix going to be limited by the serial bus speed of the A8? The Ethernet cart is a parallel device, so will be ten times faster. Nevertheless - the Lantronix looks interesting. What's required to get that running - just an RS232 interface? Apparently this is what everyone uses with BBS Express! - and yes, just an rs232 interface and $25 usd to get the 8-bit atari online Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 (edited) Apparently this is what everyone uses with BBS Express! - and yes, just an rs232 interface and $25 usd to get the 8-bit atari online I missed that meeting. May have to get me one of those! Is it functionally similar to the UDS-10, by the way? Edited February 6, 2012 by flashjazzcat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fibrewire Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 I don't know, but I assume they all serve the same basic purpose. Some of them seem to have more features than others, or support different serial protocols, but they all support rs232. With a little hacking, one might replace the 25 pin d-sub with a SIO cable... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fibrewire Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Hey, can't the 8-bit Atari be made to boot from a serial device? It would be cool to have the lantronix device point to a website with a network filesystem that boots the atari into a loader menu or network dos. Instead of us running our own BBS, we could have placeholders on atariage, and just connect to an extension of this site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Apparently this is what everyone uses with BBS Express! No, I don't. The only hardware mod I use is a null-modem cable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ransom Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Please don't assume I am discrediting this amazing project, but how does the ethernet cart compare to the MSS-100 Lantronix External Device Server? And can the Lantronix box do everything the cart can? eBay Auction -- Item Number: 300658168154 http://www.lantronix...ers/mss100.html Interesting. Thanks for pointing that out. Might be worth getting, if only to mess around with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ransom Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 This appears to be the replacement power pack for the Lantronix MSS-100's, if anyone's interested. (The MSS-100's in the auction linked above do not include power packs). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
puppetmark Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 We are making progress on the Dragon (ethernet) Carts. We have all the parts to build the first batch. I have build a few and they are being sent out today for a thorough testing. We were hoping to start selling the carts in fall, but due to my work schedule, I just haven't been able to put enough time aside to get the carts built. The fault is mine alone, and I appologize to everyone who has been waiting. I now understand why many of theses projects take so long, and some never get completed. Anyway, We really want to get this done, and I am reorganizing my life and steping up production in the upcoming weeks and when I get a better handle on the building, and the testing, I will let everyone know where we think ordering will begin. Also, I am going to put some updated info and pics on the website this week. Here are a few of the latest pictures taken while building the Dragon Carts: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
candle Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 why the case looks like sawed off? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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