[Coco] Serial to Ethernet

William Mikrut wmikrut72 at gmail.com
Tue Feb 10 15:18:23 EST 2015


Just think about what it would mean for the Coco.  A plug in network
adapter.

Simple emails... games...cloud storage.  Heck, live chat right from the
console.

It would open a whole new world if it was available.

I have several children and one is already showing an interest in
programming.  I think a Coco 3 would be a perfect starter for her (it was
for me)... and having some basic networking abilities would be a huge plus!
On Feb 10, 2015 1:51 PM, "Joe Grubbs" <jsgrubbs at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Well cool, thanks everyone. I'm going to order it and see how well it
> works. At that price I can't really go wrong. Worse comes to worse and I
> could at least use it to connect my vintage Tandy printers to the LAN :P
>
> -Joe
>
>
>
> > From: alsplace at pobox.com
> > Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 13:35:11 -0600
> > To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> > Subject: Re: [Coco] Serial to Ethernet
> >
> > > On Feb 10, 2015, at 1:13 PM, William Mikrut <wmikrut72 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > I would think it could be done as a plug in cartridge.   Wired
> properly,
> > > the Coco can communicate with a wired cable.
> >
> > Yes, yes. Initially my CoCo Ethernet box is external, and is basically a
> customized iModem type device (RS232 to Ethernet) you plug in to an RS232
> port. With different software, it could plug to the bitbanger and be a
> DriveWire ethernet interface.
> >
> > Ultimately, I want to get it mapped in to the I/O space as a cartridge
> to get the speed up. This would require completely different DriveWire
> drivers though, but I see two others in the repository so this is something
> that has already been done.
> >
> > > You would then need a light port of TCP/IP in the system... likely 16k
> > > would be sufficient to run the stack.
> >
> > In the case of the previous RS232/Ethernet adapter, the WIZNET chips do
> the stack and have a small buffer. The 5100 can handle four socket
> connections at a time, and does TCP and UDP. The heavy lifting of the
> transport protocol is done in the chip, so only the high level protocol on
> top (http, ftp, imap, etc.) would have to be done on the CoCo. I haven't
> looked, but I expect much of the work done for the DriveWire "telnet",
> "httpd", etc. commands could be leveraged.
> >
> > > You could likely use a chip and integrate it into the cart IO.
> > >
> > > It would be cool... not sure why nobody has done this yet.
> >
> > This was going to be the iChip stuff added to the Cloud-9 Superboard
> about ten years back. At the time, I was incredibly excited about this, but
> as technology marched on, much of what we could have done then (web) is no
> longer practical (html5, javascript, flash, java, etc.). BUT, there was an
> external iModem the iChip company sold which was RS232 on one end, and
> Ethernet on the other. It was about $250, if I recall and was meant to be
> an easy way to evaluate their iChip. I was in touch with them for awhile on
> pricing and such to try to bring out a box back then, but today, with
> Arduino and such, it can all be done with custom software at a fraction of
> the iModem price back then.
> >
> > So I think it was mostly price, back then.
> >
> >               -- A
> >
> >
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>
>
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