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[skurk]

Allright, this is my attempt to start a thread where you may post any idea you like (related to Amiga hardware.) I don't care if the idea is impossible, dead simple or already invented. It's just to hear what you guys have in mind, play with some ideas, have some thinking exercise.

I'll go first in the next post.

[skurk]

Parallel port USB interface

(Disclaimer: I haven't really thought this one completely through yet)

Using the bi-directional parallel port, we can read or write up to 8 bits simultaneously. It should be possible to interface the parallel port with an USB Host Controller (example) resulting in USB connectivity for all Amigas. We might have to go through a microcontroller on the way, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Ok, so it may not be ideal for ALL USB devices, but it should work fine with mice, keyboards, etc. All we need is drivers :-)

[TheGoose]

Would using the floppy driver headers be any more feasible? Still I like this idea as well. Having an easy to attach external hub would be great, were not using the old parallel port much these days are we? :-D

[delshay]

i may do a improvment of my mouse imput hack.

http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=2313=10

what will change is that a RF transmitter will be fitted to the A1200 motherboard mouse pins interface.

this is already present on all 1200 motherboards (solder pads),but is only used on rev 2B.

as the A1200 is powered up it will automaticly match with a RF mouse...nothing to plug-in. the above board may still be present but will have a switch to activate between RF & standard USB mouse.

you can build a PCB to plug directly into this slot.


NOTE: with this space not occupied a SUBWAY may fit here ie remove the mouse card altogether.

[mboehmer_e3b]

Using the bi-directional parallel port, we can read or write up to 8 bits simultaneously. It should be possible to interface the parallel port with an USB Host Controller (example) resulting in USB connectivity for all Amigas. We might have to go through a microcontroller on the way, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Well. During SUBWAY development I made such a beast. It converted a PC parallel port to a real clockport, and added some features (like switchable power supply).

Just from my experiences: nice for testing, nice for doing some peek / poke stuff, and nice for doing some basic tests with modules arriving from the assembly line (power switch with overcurrent protection).
But a real defined timing is not possible, and interrupt handling would be a mess - so I doubt such an attempt will really give you a working USB solution.

Moreover: there are clockport adapters for A500, and SUBWAYs... well... Xmas is coming :-)
Don't forget that USB needs quite some CPU power, so a 68020 is needed at last, and doing such a parallel port hack will make things more CPU consuming. So a 68030 would be handy then...

Michael

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Something like the GVP A530, but then compatible with today's hardware. Oh, and with a built-in videochip/scandoubler would be nice too :-)
(dreams out loud for the processor being that Playstation 3 chip)

[Metalguy66]

A500 Ethernet:

I think going from A500->clockport->USb adapter->USB ethernet module->ethernet is rediculous as hell, and theres no way you are going to get any decent throughput with that many software/hardware layers on a 68k machine.

Hydra systems A500 ethernet sidecars are next to impossible to find..

Using an zorro-II sidecar expansion with an X-surf/Ariadne/A2065 works, but is "ugly as sin" and isn't an option for those with "non-pass through" sidecar devices.

I'm building a small ethernet card that uses the RTL8019 embedded 10baseT ethernet controller, plugs into the 100 pin expansion connector inside various (GVP and a few others) A500 sidecar expansion devices and uses a patched version of the X-surf SANA-II drivers.

Its really VERY simple. The card needs a 50x2 female header, a single 44pin CPLD (for adress buffers/decoding/etc,) an 8k EPROM (for auto-config data,) the actual RTL8019 chip, a 20mhz Oscillator, and the LEDs, Filter, and 10baseT jack..

It's essentially an X-surf without the extra (clockport, IDE, etc.) features..

The only problem is sourcing the RTL8019 at a reasonable price. Jens Schoenfeld once told me that the reason he uses an entire ISA ethernet card on the X-surf is that it's actually easier to find those cards at a decent price, than to just buy the RTL8019. In fact, the cards cost less than what you could buy the chip alone for. And that was back in the late 90s.

For my purposes, using an entire ISA ethernet card is a huge waste of space and would not fit inside a GVP sidecar expansion enclosure. So I guess I'll end up removing the RTl8019 from ISA cards and re-using it on my card.

I'll probably attatch the 10baseT jack via a small ribbon cable so it can be hard-mounted in the back of the enclosure, or just "hung out" a hole somewhere.

[B00tDisk]

A board based on the minimig, with AGA, 8-16 mb chip access (this should be pretty easy to implement; hell, WinUAE does it), an 030 or 040, onboard ethernet + usb, and a couple two or three PCI slots (with appropriate PCI bridge of course), say maybe a DIMM socket, eh...what else? Oh yeah, ATX form factor so I can bung it into any case I want.

Yeah yeah, I know...about as pipe-dreamy as the Natami.

[Zac67]

A Super Duper Minimig:
- AGA added (just for the sake of it)
- chipset bandwidth augmented for:
- chunky pixel modes 8/16/24/32 bit
- synthetic RISC core with 68k software emulation AND native mode
- DDR2 dram interface
- USB 2.0 port(s)
- ethernet NIC
- PCIe slots

:roll: :-D

Actually a nice little RISC board with FPGA capabilities should do.

[gizz72]

Greetings,

A exact match of the classic A1200 Mobo.
-Remove old interfaces like 9 pins, serial RGB ports, Floppy drive
-Replace it with vga, DVI ports, Network port.
-enhance PCMCIA to 2.0 or better.
-DVDRom burner over the old Floppy would be nice
-Bluetooth
-SATA Drive
-with ROM4.0
-Change the keyboard style.
-I do go for a black exterior.
-You can install ANY OS if possible(Classic OS,OSX, LINUX, Vista..)
-Console Compatible (Run PSP, NeoGeo... just for gamers in mind)
-TrapDoor is not necessary since most enhancements are already there.
-As long it's Web enhanced, can edit video on the fly.

Regards,
GiZz

[spihunter]

How about a PPC or Cell on a PCI/PCI-e card to run MorphOS/OS4 in a PC or Mac?

Kind of like the old Inside/Out board but more up to date?

A faster Efika like board on a PCI card?

[Robert17]

Something Relatively small like a new '030 card for the A1200, or the A500... We can buy subways and clockports for the 500 easily enough, but CPU boards are very hard to come by, certainly the 030 type anyway.

Bring on the new Amiga 600 '030 card from Individual Computers... someday hopefully :-)

Robert

[Amiduffer]

A 68060 50 mhz AGA minimig setup.

Cheap 060 fast slot accelerator with a gigabyte of RAM! (hey, I can dream, can't I?)

[Plaz]

3GHZ Sam board with 4 gig memory and a ZorroIII bridge board so I can use some of my old cards. :-D

Yeah, ok back to the real world.

Plaz

[AeroMan]

Plaz wrote:
3GHZ Sam board with 4 gig memory and a ZorroIII bridge board so I can use some of my old cards. :-D

Yeah, ok back to the real world.

Plaz

Why not a Freescale's QorIQ P4080 with 8 PPC cores blasting @ 1.5GHz ???? :-D :-D :-D

By the way, I loved the car on the avatar. Is it an AMC Javelin? Cool...

@Metalguy66:

I have an even easier idea: hook a Microchip ENC28J60 to the clockport. This is an SPI Ethernet, shoud be really easy to do... (lunchtime fun)