[Coco] Ethernet Port Cartridge for the Coco 3

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Steve Batson
<steve at batsonphotography.com> wrote:
> I know I've seen several threads on this in the past with all sorts of opinions on it. While I have a lot of hardware and software experience in the PC world, I'm not  a circuit level person nor do I have experience writing drivers and such to make this type of thing work. I do find it interesting and have some genuine questions.
>
> While some say that the CoCo is too slow to implement an ethernet interface with software to implement the TCP/IP stack on it (and I totally understand that), wouldn't it be possible to create a product that handled all of the Ethernet hardware as well as the networking stack and just transfer requests and responses to the coco when appropriate? For example, if software was doing a file transfer, couldn't the coco just pass the request  off to the controller and transfer the data at speeds that it can handle with the controller doing all of the heavy lifting and buffering as needed?

This is pretty much what the Wiznet 5100 tcp/ip chip does.  CoCo
doesn't have DMA so it would have to be a bit more involved in a file
transfer than what you describe, but basically thats the idea.

>
> I know people of talked about a web browser for the coco too. I do think the graphics and resolution limits alone would make that not feasible even if the controller did all the hard work and just passed the page info to the coco, but I don't see why text based connections and file transfer type networking would be out of the question if the controller did all the stuff that the CoCo couldn't do efficiently.
>

Yes, a web browser is not very practical.  However we already have a
web server, telnet server and client, smtp, uucp and a partial IRC
client for the coco.  All of these work fine as they do not require
graphical resources.

> Let's say this was a feasible approach, why would this approach not be acceptable if it works and there's no other feasible way to do it? Better than not having the ability to do it :)
>
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> On Feb 3, 2013, at 11:29 AM, Mark Ormond <markormond at mtxsystems.com> wrote:
>
>> That's the same chip used in the arduino Ethernet shield, really easy to setup and with it being in a arduino lib, easy to look at working source code.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Aaron Wolfe
>> Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2013 2:00 PM
>> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
>> Subject: Re: [Coco] Ethernet Port Cartridge for the Coco 3
>>
>> Implementing UDP is nearly as difficult as TCP, well probably 90% or so..  You still need the same underlying stack and whatnot.
>>
>> I think a good approach would be to use something like this:
>>
>> https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9471?
>>
>> Cheap, and it provides a decent TCP/IP stack in hardware and connects to the ethernet/wifi interface.  So you'd just have to communicate between coco and the tcp controller at a high level.
>>
>> -Aaron
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 11:56 AM, Robert Hermanek <rhermanek at centurytel.net> wrote:
>>> You know, whenever this subject comes up, I agree that implementing
>>> TCP would be impossible.  But if the ethernet hardware was possible,
>>> why not just implement UDP instead?  If I had a udp-only ethernet
>>> catridge plugged into my coco3 I'd be one happy guy.
>>>
>>> -RobertH
>>>
>>> On 1/26/2013 9:04 PM, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I've never seen ethernet for a coco.  At the fest I've seen what
>>>> looked like a prototype ARCnet interface (10base2) but the word there
>>>> was that nobody is exactly sure what it implements.
>>>>
>>>> Getting an ethernet port wired up to a coco would be challenging.
>>>> Actually doing anything with it would be much more so, since there
>>>> isn't any software (yet).  I've approached a few different 'hardware
>>>> guys' about putting together an ethernet interface + one of the
>>>> small/cheap TCP/IP stacks on a chip, since that would at least get us
>>>> something new applications could use without first having to write a
>>>> low level networking stack.  Nobody has done much along those lines
>>>> yet that I know of.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jan 26, 2013 at 9:39 PM, Kip Koon <computerdoc at sc.rr.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hey You Guys,
>>>>>
>>>>> I remember seeing an Ethernet port cartridge for the coco, but I
>>>>> don't remember where.  Does anyone have any recollection of an
>>>>> Ethernet port being created as a cartridge or as an add-on to one of
>>>>> the other multi-purpose paks.  For instance, I have a Disto Super
>>>>> Controller that has some pins sticking out the side which I never
>>>>> ended up using for anything.  It has eight addresses available for
>>>>> anything.  Is there anyone who has some of Tony's old add-ons he
>>>>> developed for his multi-purpose cartridges?  If so, I'd like to see
>>>>> if something catches my eye.  Thanks guys.
>>>>>
>>>>> Kip
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
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