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Chaotis
November 28th, 2004, 16:40
Several people have made it known that they want a new bba adapter that doesn't cost 180$ or so.

I was hoping to start this topic where we can post any and all info on the subject and maybe eventually work towards building a new one. Anyone with information on the parallel port, programming for it, the current BBAs, hardware that might be usable, etc; please post it here.

This topic branched off the DC Cluster topic so you can also look there for more info.

semicolo
November 28th, 2004, 17:47
There's an error in the pictures I gave you, the guy who scanned them scanned his modem in place of hi BBA by mistake :-S

wraggster
November 28th, 2004, 18:20
a homebrew BBA would be a massive step for the scene :)

good luck

Chaotis
November 29th, 2004, 12:22
Guess I can start off with what we know already.

The BBA, or at least one model, uses the realtec 8139 ethernet contoller IC. This lets the dreamcast connect to an ethernet network.

The dreamcast parallel port has 16 data pins (pinout can be found on the internet) and operates at 25mhz. Allowing 50MB/s data transfer.

Most ethernet contollers (pci) operate with 32 pins at 33mhz.

I can think of 3 ways we may be able to connect the two together:
-Find a chip that can operate at 12.5mhz (half the parallel port) and send two sets of 16bits for each clock.
-Find an ethernet controller that uses 16bits already.
-Overclock the maple bus to be able to operate at twice the slowest pci clock. I've seen 16.75 so that means overclocking the bus from 25 to 35mhz. Then doing the pairs of 16bits idea.

Any ideas on feasability or know of something we can use?

semicolo
November 29th, 2004, 17:15
Should be easier to have a chip working at 25Mhz just translating 16bits in 32 with some buffers, the realtek must be working at 25Mhz (as one can change pci speed in one's pc bios and it won't affect ethernet cards).

Finding an ethernet chip working at 16 bits should lead us to obsolete parts, but can be done.

Overclocking the G2 bus (maple is for joysticks) doesn't seems a good idea for me, it could alter the standard behaviour of the DC since the sound chip is connected on it.

Chaotis
November 29th, 2004, 23:21
But wouldn't taking the 16bit to 32bit mean halving the mhz to 12.5? I haven't been able to find any controllers that will run at this speed. Or is there another way to do this? I'm taking classes on electronics but haven't gotten very far yet, maybe in the following years...

semicolo
November 30th, 2004, 03:16
It would mean buffering pci strobes of data.
Like i said, pci devices sould be able to run at 25Mhz.
If for example the pci device sends 16 times 32 bits (at 25Mhz), one keeps it in a memory and then (or even in the same time) one sends it on the g2 bus 32 times 16 bits.
In the other direction it would just be wait for two times 16 bits before writing 32 bits on the pci device.

That seems to be another job for SUPER CPLD defender of the logic and numerical data.

pboese
November 30th, 2004, 17:26
Sounds like an amibitious project ;D Semicolo's DC modem disassembly tutorial and extender board is a great start though http://semicolo.free.fr/Dreamcast/. Thanks for that semicolo!

Chaotis
December 1st, 2004, 14:22
Ah, I understand now. I thought it was something that was always streaming data. Not sure if that makes things easier or harder...

Other than telling the hardware when to wait and storing the seperate 16bit sections both ways, anything else that might cause problems between the two interfaces?

quzar
December 1st, 2004, 19:30
why not use an isa ethernet card as your basis? that way you dont need to do any weird things since it would be a 16 bit bus anyways...

Chaotis
December 1st, 2004, 22:20
From what I saw, the ISA only runs at 8mhz or so. That might make it a little hard too, and I bet that would only allow a base10 ethernet and waste a lot of what the port could handle. Of course I'm not an expert like I've said so if anyone knows otherwise feel free to correct me.

Alexvrb
December 1st, 2004, 22:29
Because even if you could get a full speed ISA bus, it's not very fast?

quzar
December 1st, 2004, 22:32
Still significantly faster than the serial port?

Chaotis
December 1st, 2004, 22:51
Yeah, full speed ISA would be some 50x faster than the serial port but we could still get like 5x more than that if we can make use of a base100 ethernet. If we can find a 16bit one that runs at a higher mhz that would be really helpful.

Rufus
December 1st, 2004, 22:52
I'm sure that everyone has seen this http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/products1-2.aspx?modelid=6

It supports PCI clock speeds from 16.75 to 40MHz and can be interfaced to PCI, mini-PCI or Cardbus...

Couldn't someone have a look inside their own BBA and let us know whats inside? Wouldn't that be a easy route to develop a "replacement"?

quzar
December 1st, 2004, 23:11
The fact you have to consider though is that anything that you send over a bba would be well under 16mb as it would have to fit into the DC's ram AND have space to execute. Therefore 16mbps would pretty much be the maximum needed for anything. 16bits x 8mz =~ 16mpbs that means that in under a second you could send all the data you want to. IMO that is an acceptable speed =P.

Chaotis
December 1st, 2004, 23:12
The BBA uses some proprietary logic chips to do all the work and so far nobody has let us know how they do it. So we're stuck trying to find our own way. Still hoping someone has a BBA and can give us more information to go on. Thanks. ;D

Edit: Wow, we posted at the same time...

Well I wanted to get it as fast as possible in order to work as a cluster. Even though it can send all the data it could hold in memory it would in this case be processing it and sending it back just as much. Was hoping to kill two birds with one stone. ^^

semicolo
December 2nd, 2004, 05:02
Again the pictures :

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pryonic/photos/BBAcote.JPG
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pryonic/photos/BBArecto.JPG
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pryonic/photos/BBAverso.JPG

There's really a Realteak 8139 in it, the trouble comes from the Sega chip
Maintaining compatibility with the official BBA would be nice, there are good informations in kos kernel on how the BBA talks to the G2 bus (DMA etc ...)

Alexvrb
December 2nd, 2004, 21:07
Quzar, some thoughts:
1) If you're going to build a custom piece of hardware anyway, why would you purposely use an older, slower interface if you're still going to have to fudge the thing just as much.
2) We're not currently talking about just sending data to store in memory. If you're designing a cluster, you give it a piece. It chugs it, sends results, gets new piece.
3) Assuming you WERE just using it for dev purposes (or otherwise just filling the DC's RAM for the hell of it) the serial port would suffice and indeed be a whole lot easier/cheaper to work with.

Chaotis
December 2nd, 2004, 22:34
Yes, that would be very nice to keep it backwards compatible with the previous BBA(s?). Is there any information on the glue logic chips that sega used or can anyone maybe probe it to find out for us. (doubting, but would be really helpful) Also, if anyone has the BBA, how fast does it currently send/recv data?

I was looking at making this replacement because it would be helpful in so many different things. Possible cluster or online vs dev games, development of software, all kinds of stuff. Hope we're up to the challenge.

semicolo
December 3rd, 2004, 04:12
I don't know if anyone has tried to break the sega chip. I cannot help on this, I don't own a BBA nor a logic analyser.

Chaotis
December 3rd, 2004, 17:19
Does anyone know where we can get the realtec chip to use for prototyping? I've seen places to order it but that's only in bulk (orders over 500$). I've thought about contacting realtec themselves but wanted to ask those who know more about ICs first.

Still haven't found any more information on the BBA.

semicolo
December 4th, 2004, 13:43
I was more thinking of using an ethernet pci card with a rt8139 on it than building one. (and say the pci interface could work for other pci cards)

pboese
December 4th, 2004, 17:49
I see the product webpage is little more than marketing hype:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/products1-2.aspx?modelid=7

I think unless you are a motherboard or high volume PCI card mfr you are out of luck. If I were you I would get a logic analyzer, study a BBA in operation and then use a glue chip with someone elses chip to make a functional clone.

Alexvrb
December 4th, 2004, 17:54
Stock BBA is 10 mbits/sec. But the problem is that you're going to have a very hard time obtaining what is needed to build a drop-in replacement that is BBA-compatible. Whatever you build is probably going to end up being a custom solution that only works for devving and homebrew that supports it.

Which is why I recommend USB <-> DC Serial if your goal is just good speed for a dev cable. If your goal is a BBA replacement, good luck.

pboese
December 4th, 2004, 17:59
...
Which is why I recommend USB <-> DC Serial if your goal is just good speed for a dev cable. If your goal is a BBA replacement, good luck.

;D

Chaotis
December 4th, 2004, 21:02
I guess then the best way to describe what I hope to eventually build is the highest speed connection I can to a network. Though it may be useful for dev; I mainly want it as something that can be used in homebrew games and software to communicate with either other dreamcasts (for multiplayer) or a computer (clusters or streaming programs like video players).

I had hoped that it wouldn't be too much harder to keep it compatible with the previous BBA it doesn't sound too likely so the best we can hope for is a good replacement.

Still looking for anyone with a bba to give us some information on it's workings though.

Alexvrb
December 6th, 2004, 19:25
BBA is only 10mbits, and that's plenty fast for everything except maybe a DC cluster, in which case 100mbits would be plenty (for this hardware, at any rate). So really, you don't need to worry about maxing out the expansion port unless you're building a custom non-ISA ATA interface or some other fast storage device. Further, BBA compatibility would be awesome, but is unlikely. I'd be happy with a homebrew-use-only 10 or 100 mbit ethernet adapter of any sort... but that's still a whole lot of work.

For dev and streaming video/audio, Axlen's cable should suffice (given appropriate software support in the latter case).

RangerGuy
December 10th, 2004, 07:59
Holy crap! I think I have an old NIC card with that RealTek chip in it! I'll have to double check to see.

BTW, I am behind deving a new BBA 100%, and would help as much as possible.

Chaotis
December 10th, 2004, 12:19
I've been looking into a lot of options lately but sadly, haven't been able to find any new information. We really need someone to look at their bba and give us some more info on how it works.

If we can find another ethernet controller ic that we can buy online for fairly cheap; we should start studying to see if we can't get it to work. How much data would be able to be sent at a time if it must be stored on the ethernet ic until it has had time to be sent to the dc, which recieves it at half the speed. Hopefully the ethernet ic can handle this dynamically so it doesn't overrun it's memory because it can't get the data out as fast as it's coming it.

Hrm... well just a bunch of questions to be asked for those that understand electronics, hope I made some kind of sense. O_<

semicolo
December 11th, 2004, 23:58
Well the transfer speed shouldn't be a problem since the dc G2 bus is 400 Mbps when ethernet is 100 Mbps, it should be ok with some buffers.

I've got 2 or 3 ethernet cards with a realtek 8139 too.

RangerGuy
December 13th, 2004, 12:08
OK, I checked the NIC card I have, and unfortaunately, it is not the same chip. However, when I get the opportunity, I will take a picture of it, and post it.

semicolo
December 13th, 2004, 21:48
one could use the realtek 8100 too, it's the same as 8139 but has physical layer integrated, with the same problem of interfacing it onto the G2 bus and obtaining the chip in small quantities.

wiatr
December 21st, 2004, 09:20
If the homebrew BBA is feasible, I think that we would instead have to obtain the chip in huge quantities, since every single DC owner would probably ask for one.

Any idea of how much a homebrew BBA would cost (supposing the G2 / Realtek interfacing coud be easily solved) ?

I also wondered, since the modem extension is included by default in each off-the-shelf DC package, if it could be possible to re-use the modem extension, but twist it to interface itself with a realtek system to go ethernet.

What do you think about this?

Alexvrb
December 21st, 2004, 13:07
I find it very unlikely that the masses would be interested, especially because it could never be cheap, affordable maybe, but not cheap enough to buy on a whim. Anyway, you still might need to buy in fairly large quantities, depending on the chip. A lot of times there's a relatively large minimum order, you know? So unless you can scavenge from cheap PC networking hardware, no individual could really get it rolling anyway. But that's assuming someone had a design for a fast, simple ethernet interface. ;)

semicolo
December 22nd, 2004, 14:50
Supposing the G2 / pci can be done by a CPLD and we make about 100 boards, these two pieces of hardware would cost about 15 US$ (and a realtek ethernet pci card can be found for 10 US$ I think).

Well not a bad idea for the modem thingy, we'll have to figure if the chip used are pci ones (like in winmodems) and if it's the case reuse the bridge. Darn I think I dumped mine already...

Mental2k
December 23rd, 2004, 16:58
so could we load on homebrew using this?

Chaotis
January 2nd, 2005, 13:23
I'm still here, just been out of town snowboarding for a few weeks. Also have several other projects on my hands so any work I've done has been really slow.

I still haven't been able to find any other networking chip for sale that doesn't have a minimum quantity of like 500+ so if anyone knows of one please let us know. I guess the other way to go is find a common ethernet card and use it (or pieces of it)?

Just a passing thought, anyone think it would be worthwhile to just build a g2 to pci adapter and use an ethernet card to do the rest of the work? I don't mean trying to build one where you could put any pci card into it, just an ethernet card or perhaps several different ones unless they are very different hardware wise. No idea as to the difficulties in this idea. :-/

I went through all of my spare hardware, and in about 8 ethernet cards I didn't have any realtek ones. x.x

STC-Fan
January 5th, 2005, 11:12
Crikey... never in my right mind did I imagine anyone else would have thought of actually trying to build a replacement BBA! But that's mainly because up until now I've only been visiting the B00B! DC Research forums which are sadly rather idle :P

Not that I'm trying to build one, but I have thought about it on occasion, including the idea Chaotis mentioned, though it would probably be quite hard to do. Having said that, getting the pinouts for a PCI port would be handy to start with. I just did a Google Search and came up with this. (http://safariexamples.informit.com/0789725428/Reference/PCIBus.pdf)

(EDIT: And I suppose a pinout for the BBA connector would be very useful as well, though I couldn't find that on Google. A bit of DC reverse-engineering would probably be needed to produce details like that.)

semicolo
January 6th, 2005, 23:25
Well I started thinking of using a cpld for bridging the G2 to pci
I found some verilog source on the Internet (copied there : ftp://semicolo.homelinux.org/dreamcast/verilog.php.html)
Credits go to Ben Jackson.

In early thinking for now (well in fact I've got all the needeed hardware but the pci connector)

Mental2k
January 7th, 2005, 13:15
Actually wouldnt backups in the way you're suggesting it be alright to mention, as you arenot actually altering the software?

STC-Fan
January 7th, 2005, 20:57
Actually wouldnt backups in the way you're suggesting it be alright to mention, as you arenot actually altering the software?

I don't know. As far as I know it is (or rather, *should* be). But like I said, you still can't rip whole GD-ROM discs yet anyway. Tomorrow (or rather, about 8-10 hours from now as it's already Saturday) I'm going to pick up a CD-ROM drive I bought off eBay in December which *may* be able to read them fully.

So far I've tested about 15 CD/DVD-ROM drives with the "swap trick" process (as it's known) and found that almost all of them are incapable of getting (much) data off the high-density sector. I even tried a Yamaha CD-RW drive - that could not even read the table of contents (TOC) of the disc, let alone anything else.

Thing is, reportedly the Yamaha CRW-F1 can rip GD-ROMs, but I wasn't prepared to spend £30 on a new one on an eBay Shop last time I saw one.

Chaotis
January 12th, 2005, 23:06
Well after looking around quite a bit, I have found a retailer that sells the realtek 8139 nic and also an ethernet card that has the 8139C on it! Woot.

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=realtek+8139&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&sa=N&tab =ff&oi=froogler
http://www.dealsonic.com/pan10mbpcine.html

I have not tried to buy anything yet but it allows quantities of 1 and at 5-8$ I think that'll work just fine to get us started.

quzar
January 12th, 2005, 23:18
Actually wouldnt backups in the way you're suggesting it be alright to mention, as you arenot actually altering the software?


there is nothing wrong with that sort of ripping/backupping, but that is usually the line that people draw towards warez.

semicolo
January 13th, 2005, 07:30
I think, I'd rather work on a generic G2-PCI adapter than using the realtek nic as it could be used for something else and the nic will stay hard to find in small quantities (or overpriced, I'd rather buy an ethernet card than a more expensive nic).
If that works one could try to make another one, BBA compatible with the nic.

Chaotis
January 13th, 2005, 16:27
So are you saying you want to make a pci adapter that would work universally or try to use a pci ethernet card as a broadband connector. A pci adapter sounds like it would really fun to try but not sure how viable it is.

semicolo
January 15th, 2005, 08:30
A full featured PCI adapter may be hard to implement, but if it's possible, why not. At least one that'll work with ethernet cards to have some broadband thingy.

Parappa
January 15th, 2005, 10:40
Sounds like an amibitious project Â*;D Â*Semicolo's DC modem disassembly tutorial and extender board is a great start though http://semicolo.free.fr/Dreamcast/. Â*Thanks for that semicolo!

Lil bit off topic:
Is that IDE :o ?? What can you do through it?

semicolo
January 16th, 2005, 07:26
No, it's just a start to be able to connect homemade hardware to the dreamcast.

RangerGuy
January 16th, 2005, 10:25
Ok, I found the NIC card i have, and this is the RealTek chip:

RTL8139D
Â*27100S1
234E Taiwan

Dunno if that helps or not.

Wait ust a dang second! The BBA Adapter is a RTL8139 !!

HA!

Chaotis
February 4th, 2005, 05:02
Well I'm back after being idle for a while. (on the forums at least) I've been taking a lot more electronics classes in college so this stuff is starting to make a little more sense.

I'm going to study pci and the dreamcast bus a bit longer to try and figure some of this stuff out. Don't think I've given up on the subject already.

~Chaotis

adriano_linux
February 4th, 2005, 16:57
where buy that bba ??? ??? ??? ???

Chaotis
February 5th, 2005, 20:23
You can find the BBA on ebay and a few other online shops but it's not cheap. That's why we're working on making a new one that is affordable and can be used by homedev games.

kylelear
February 6th, 2005, 18:36
I remember trying to install my NIC (belkin F5D5000) on XP and having problems - It thought it was an RTL8139 audio card :-/

I'll pop my case open later and find out - its possible thats its a widely used chip ;)

(edit: I just posted an online help support request at belkin.com asking what the main chip used in the F5D5000 is... doub it'll get anywhere, but the answer could be amusing :P)

RangerGuy
February 8th, 2005, 16:30
Well, like I said, the RTL chip in my NIC card is an RTL8139, but its a revision D, so I dunno if it would work. I believe the BBA is a revision C (too lazy to check)

kylelear
February 8th, 2005, 18:53
Belkin got back to me, and told me that it is indeed a RTL8139... not sure on the revision though.

I have another card somewhere, so I'll have a look at that too (its made by 3com, so it'd be intresting to see if its used there too).

STC-Fan
February 14th, 2005, 01:53
Damn. Haven't been here for a while (oh and BTW that thing I mentioned about the Yamaha CRW-F1 in my last post is complete and utter nonsense) =P

But, I found a nice page a while ago, for anyone who wants to know how to get a PCI slot - well, quite a lot more than that actually - free from an old motherboard in a rather neat way. Obviously I cannot guarantee whether everything will work after you have done this, though =P

And here it is: http://www.savel.org/hardware/solder/index-en.html

EDIT: Hmm, how odd, hyperlinks are the same colour as plain text on this board - how's anyone supposed to see a hyperlink in a post? Meh. =P

Chaotis
February 24th, 2005, 06:27
Well I'm glad to see that others are still keeping this thread alive while I'm away doing stuff. ^^ Just finished another digital electronics class today. (supposed to take all 16 weeks. :-p) And I'll be starting another next week. Can't tell you how much more things make sense thanks to those classes so far.

I've seen a lot of those chips around for pretty cheap (5-10$), gonna depend on a lot more things that are needed to see what kind of money we're talking about to develop one. (I'm always broke. ^^;)

I'll take a look at that desoldering link since I have a few mobos lying around with pci slots on them, still need to get myself a new dc to work with too so I can get back to work on this project. Everyone keep a lookout for any information on pci/dc parallel/ethernet ic's and stuff that might be useful; we can beat this yet.

3yE
August 17th, 2006, 18:35
The requiered parts are not much of a problem, at least out here in europe. mikrokontroller.net pages list many shops, with customer reviews, which will get all of this stuff. For byung one piece, the price for network chip + PHY + jack should not exceed 15 EUR.

What is much of a problem, is a PCI bus. I've talked to a guy who develops all sorts of network stuff professionally, and he is afraid that the realtek chip used on the original BBA, as a true PCI chip, makes use of busmastering feature, which allows the target to control writes to memory. It might be very hard to implement a full-featured PCI host. I'm yet to read the BBA drivers from KOS thoroughly, but even if KOS accesses the bridge in a simple manner, and one can make a device work, it might still be that it won't work right with original games.

If the compatibility with original games is not requiered or not quite possible anyway, there are probably better ways to build a network card. One can use some NE2000 clone, like RTL8019AS (10 MBit), CS8900 (?), AX88796, LAN91C111 (both 100 MBit). These devices are all ISA, but also compatible with a broad range of microcontrollers and other stuff. I'm about to read the data sheets, but my first impression is that they are really flexible, perhaps they can be driven with the native DC external port frequency for maximum performance.

You have probably all seen bITmASTERs page where he wires up an ISA card to DCEXT through a couple of driver chips. NetBSD testing revealed it to be quite slow, around 200 kb/s on recieve. It is OK for developer purposes, because faster than even USB to Serial though.

There was also an old LAN Adapter for Dreamcast, HT-0300 (while the modern one is HT-0400/0401). It was based upon the same simple bridge (ISA?) like the modem, and had the trouble that all I/O was PIO bytewise, whereas the usual mode would be DMA. PIO is slower and most importantly consumes a lot of CPU time, while the DMA basically does not. This is the reason HT-0300 is not supported by games (would kill performance) and perhaps one problem that we'd have to face while designing new hardware.

I don't know much shit about designing hardware and could use any help, but i think i could organize manufacturing without much trouble, probably even in very small quantities.

Nice knowing the interest isn't all dead btw!

Morph
August 17th, 2006, 23:50
Intesting. I am sure that the D revision will work. Why? Because the point of revision is to revise the old system. Therefore, it SHOULD still be compatible (kind of like how you can pop in a Motorola 68010 to replace the Genesis' 68000, faster and a little more streamlined).

All I can say after that, is, you are still going to hit a brick wall with the Sega proprietary ROM chip that is on the BBA. If you could find some way to flash the data, then you can copy it to a compatible chip. However, unless Sega gives you proven permision, that is very Illegal.

3yE
August 18th, 2006, 12:38
Well, i checked out the PCI IDs and it appears that C and D series are the same, while C+ series are different. :) So while your logic didn't necessarily work here, the D chip should be the same what sofware conserns. D is a more compactly integrated hardware design. Though i don't think this is all too important, because C is still being sold.

What you see on the board is unfortunately not a ROM chip, and the network chip is not wired up directly to the Dreamcast G2 port, but throgh this chip. It would carry a programing which identifies itself to the G2 and complies with its signals (which is easy) but also emulates a PCI bus on the other side (which is hard). While Sega could easily license some PCI host softcore, i'm not sure i could afford it. Whatever this chip is, it is solid hardware, and there is no way to "download" its internals. To regain software compatibility, we'd have to debug some original software, however i'm not skilled enough to do that. So while not completely impossible, i'd need help.

-edit: thrown out all PLD speculations.

3yE
August 19th, 2006, 16:58
For the first stage, i want to find out how the original system was wired up. It would be very nice if someone could convert the following to eagle format, or just to a set of well-readable images.

http://www.fuzzymuzzle.com/Kiyoshi/Images/dcext11_pcb.htm

Next thing, we need a nonpci ethernet chip. Or perhaps a microcontroller with an embedded ethernet chip. The ethernet chip, if its alone, its preferable that it could stream in and out the data at 25 mhz (8-bit) or half when 16-bit without waitstates. This would allow to build a controller later which runs with full ethernet speed and doesn't consume much CPU. The microcontroller should be able to be at least 25 MIPS (or the double? i don't know). If nothing that suits is found, we'll see how we do simpler. I'm striving for making it much, much faster and less CPU-hungry than bITmASTER's simple hookup.

If anone sees any examples of attaching an ethernet controller to a microcontroller, please post. If anyone has any more information on the G2 bus, or can make some analysis, please post. i'm particularly interested whether it's possible to signal waitstates when transferring data to Dreamcast.

If we're successful building this, it will likely be manufactured on demand through the help of DreamcastScene.com.

ßüboni¢ $oñic
August 28th, 2006, 17:44
any update

3yE
August 28th, 2006, 23:14
Have no time to do anything right now. In 2 weeks, i will resume the development. I'm still about to read the PCI specs to see how realistic recreation of the original BBA is - that is, use the same original network chip and emulate only the bridge in hardware, say, with an FPGA.

If that's discarded, we'll see whether emulation of the original BBA using a separate microprocessor could be done. I think we would take Asix AX88796 network adapter or similar, and Atmel FPSLIC for the bridge and emulator. AX1100x LAN System-on-chip is also being evaluated for that matter.

If that all fails, we're just wiring up an AX88796 to something like Lattice Mach-XO or some other CPLD and SRAM and see what we can do. SRAM is to buffer the transfers between the G2 and the LAN chip, so that we can transfer a batch per interrupt call and not just a single byte or word as in prior solutions. This should give us something that is homebrew-only but at least quite fast, much faster than bITmASTERs design and HIT-0300.

If anyone can suggest any other hardware to use, please do so. Do some googling, etc, don't put all of the burden onto me, i've got life as well you know, i'm a total newbee to the task, and i'm not going to earn any money on it, but i have to spend my own money on the development hardware. Any help will increase the probability that this thing actually gets done someday. If someone is located in europe and would like to help building the first prototypes, please contact me.

$oñic, if you'd like to help, why don't you convert the PCB file linked in the last post to some colorful, easy to read images? I'm just very busy with other stuff at the moment, so i'd appreciate that.

Tomlo
August 29th, 2006, 17:35
I wish I knew what you people were talking about.

quzar
August 29th, 2006, 17:54
I do, and it's mostly gibberish.

3yE
August 29th, 2006, 19:51
Urgh, yeah, thanks guzar, how f***ing friendly of you!

ßüboni¢ $oñic
August 30th, 2006, 21:37
$oñic, if you'd like to help, why don't you convert the PCB file linked in the last post to some colorful, easy to read images? I'm just very busy with other stuff at the moment, so i'd appreciate that.

i think ill just send you a money order..

ßüboni¢ $oñic
September 15th, 2006, 15:17
ok i will help anyway possible. what do i need to put that file code n to turn into an image?


)
Layer(8 "unused")
(
Line(470 5165 475 5170 20 30 0x00000020)
Line(470 4780 470 5165 20 30 0x00000020)
Line(2430 2530 2430 2860 20 30 0x00000020)
Line(800 1590 970 1590 20 30 0x00000020)
Line(3745 4970 3745 5360 20 30 0x00000020)
Line(2350 2660 2330 2660 20 30 0x00000020)
)
Layer(9 "silk")
(

semicolo
September 18th, 2006, 13:31
It's the code for a pcb, but I don't know which software was used, maybe pcb under linux.

semicolo
September 18th, 2006, 13:36
http://www.fuzzymuzzle.com/Kiyoshi/Images/dcext11.ps
Just search for ghostscript/gsview for windows and install them to see this file