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[Colani1200]

Ever thought of connecting your rather unexpanded Amiga 500 to the internet via 3G? Crazy? Can´t be done? Of course it can, this is Amiga after all. ;-)

What you will need:

- an Amiga with 1 MB RAM and kickstart 2.0 or higher
- a Siemens S55 mobile phone with a data plan
- a Siemens RS232 cable
- a DB-9 to DB-25 adaptor
- TermiteTCP (I used the latest version I know of, which is 1.6).



The special thing about the S55 (and other Siemens models with that connector) is that it behaves like an old analog modem. There are mobile phones from other manufacturers with a serial connection, e.g. some Nokia models like the 5110, but the modem functionality is almost always built into proprietary software and not usable on the Amiga.

To get your 3G (or GPRS, to be precise) connection up and running, you have to configure Termite TCP this way:

- Modem speed: 19200
- Modem init string: AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","put.APN.of.your.3G.provider.her e"
- telephone number: ATD*99#
- DNS-Server: a valid, public DNS server such as 8.8.8.8 (Google)

That´s about it! Dial up the connection and you will be able to e.g. telnet to your favorite BBS or download some files via FTP with the included telnet/ftp software. I read that grapevine IRC can be used with Termite TCP aswell, but I didn´t try.

Second approach

After getting that far, I realized that there is one major drawback: Kickstart 2.0. While most A500 users upgraded to 1 MB RAM quite early, I think the majority is still equipped with kickstart 1.x. After digging around in aminet for a while, I found one single TCP/IP stack which is compatible with kickstart 1.x: AmigaNOS, the Amiga port of the "network operating system" originally created for MS-DOS. There are a couple of different versions around, none of them is really fully documented. I tried AmigaNOSGW6 from aminet because this version is capable of dialling, the other version on aminet isn´t. I fought with it almost 1 day and gave up in the end. I got it quite far actually, it started a ppp connection and spit out a PAP authentication prompt, but I think this version lacks the ability to receive a dynamically assigned IP address + default gateway from the provider. Without that, you´re pretty much lost. Anyway, if somebody wants to play with it, here is what I figured out so far:

- Create a dialer script "nos-dial" with the following content:

timeout 1200
send ATZ
wait OK
send AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","put.APN.of.your.3G.provider.here"
wait OK
send ATD*99#
send AT+CGDATA=PPP,1

- Create a NOS startup-script "nos-ppp" with the following content:

autodial nos-dial
attach asy serial.device 0 ppp ppp0 4096 1500 19200 0
hostname amiga500
domain addserver 8.8.8.8

Fire up AmigaNOSGW with the following command:

AmigaNOSGW nos-ppp

This will bring up an interface ppp0 attached to serial.device and automatically dial in. You will get a popup with username/password (my provider doesn´t validate this, so I could fill in anything). If somebody figures out how to receive a dynamic IP address on ppp0 + the default gateway, I am eagerly awaiting the solution. ;-)

What next?

Well, since the above approaches are of somewhat limited use (no SANA-II API), I am planning to create a bootable disk with AmiTCP/IP and some ppp.device for 3G connection. Just fill in your APN and go. But this will take some time.

Thanks for reading. ;-)

written on my A500 with Ed 1.14

[som99]

Wow nice work, nice idea Keep it up it will be nice to see the boot disk!

[kickstart]

Nice work! but that is gsm not 3G

[psxphill]

Originally Posted by kickstart

Nice work! but that is gsm not 3G

Technically it's GPRS, but yeah it's not a 3G phone.

[kickstart]

Yes gprs sorry, isnt a critict... nice work.

[LoadWB]

I was gonna say the same thing about the GPRS vs 3G thing. But, it does work. I did the same thing with my SonyEricsson T637 and Miami. I've also used my T637 as a backup modem for my SMC Barricade 7008ABR.

Would have loved to use my K790a (EDGE) and K850i (3G,) but those went USB and there's no USB NDIS drivers for us Amigans.

[rzookol]

Originally Posted by LoadWB

I was gonna say the same thing about the GPRS vs 3G thing. But, it does work. I did the same thing with my SonyEricsson T637 and Miami. I've also used my T637 as a backup modem for my SMC Barricade 7008ABR.

Would have loved to use my K790a (EDGE) and K850i (3G,) but those went USB and there's no USB NDIS drivers for us Amigans.

usb modems should work without problems, they only need to be switched (look into cdcacm aros poseidon class) and then, one of interface can act as simple serial device with standard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_command_set

[Drummerboy]

Great Job!

Congratulations!

[Colani1200]

Originally Posted by psxphill

Technically it's GPRS, but yeah it's not a 3G phone.

True... While it is faster than pure GSM (which is 9600 bps only), the underlying radio technology still is GSM, only with link aggregation. But, even GPRS exceeds the possible serial.device speed anyway.

[Matt_H]

Wow, great work! My old cell phone (LG CU515) has a USB modem profile but I could never get it working because I didn't know the modem init string. I'll definitely give this a try when I get a new SIM card.

How's the speed? Does it feel like dial-up, or faster? For big box Amigas, this could also be a workaround for the shortage of network and USB cards...

[delshay]

I said something like this on another website but nobody seems to care.

Wireless card connect via tethering mobile 3 or 4g can someone test as I do not have the time to check.

[LoadWB]

Originally Posted by delshay

I said something like this on another website but nobody seems to care.

Wireless card connect via tethering mobile 3 or 4g can someone test as I do not have the time to check.

In theory there's no difference between connecting to a wireless router on a broadband connection and connecting to a 3G/4G "hotspot." So, yeah, you should be able to get your Amiga online that way.

[Colani1200]

Originally Posted by Matt_H

How's the speed? Does it feel like dial-up, or faster?

Tbh, I only tried telnet on few BBS, but that felt quite snappy really. The telnet client which comes with Termite TCP unfortunately doesn't support ANSI though..

For big box Amigas, this could also be a workaround for the shortage of network and USB cards...

For the big boxes, you'll really want more speed. Though I am not quite sure, I think the serial connection of the S55 is fixed to 19200 bps.

But I already have some ideas for the next project in this direction, we'll see...

[Akiko]

I would love to somehow get my CD32 / SX32 online, are there any other solutions that don't require a phone and data plan? Could something like these Serial to Ethernet adapters be made to work?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Multifunct...item3a7af04bde

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Interface-...item5aeabc2d23