plipbox

What is it?

plipbox is an Arduino-based device that allows to connect low-end classic Amigas via Ethernet to your local network. It bridges IP traffic received via PLIP on the parallel port of the Amiga to the Ethernet port attached to the Arduino.

Introduction

With the plip2slip project I already presented a device that uses a cheap AVR 8 bit microcontroller (as found on the popular Arduino boards) to bridge network traffic from the Amiga’s parallel port (with the MagPLIP protocoll) to another machine via a fast serial link.

plipbox extends the plip2slip project and replaces the serial link for IP traffic with an on-board Ethernet port. This allows you to connect your Amiga directly to your local network without any other machine assisting.

With the on-board Ethernet port the plipbox HW is more complex than the plip2slip HW, but I tried to use common and easy available HW modules to simplify the recreation of this device. This allows even novice users to build their own plipbox. (See the hardware document for details).

Software Releases

The current release is:

v0.6 17.01.2015 – plipbox-0.6.zip size: 367134 md5: 1251968a08b9b66db46fdfbf8baefa11 sha1: ab4483a405839e5123e580da7ededfd07c68ac24 changes: new fast burst protocol for raw parallel transfers of up to 235 KiB/s see benchmark.md for detailed performance values cleaned up firmware and driver code rewrote firmware to handle a full ethernet frame in SRAM reduced parameters in firmware -> simplified usage added new test modes to allow detailed benchmarking of all system components

– plipbox-0.6.zip v0.5 30.11.2014 – plipbox-0.5.zip size: 322835 md5: fcdb43b225a9c544e5c5928b8f4279c0 sha1: 276d2e963bebca37b55796de80bcd7f9c09d5641 changes: plipbox device now automatically receives its MAC address from driver you can change your MAC address with SANA-II command in software (if your TCP/IP stack supports it, e.g. Miami DX or Roadshow) plipbox device maps online/offline state to Ethernet module and disables it if devie is offline parallel line protocol completely rewritten to use a client server model added optional Ethernet full duplex support added optional Ethernet flow control improved device statistics added error log

– plipbox-0.5.zip v0.4 1.6.2013 – plipbox-0.4.zip size: 214433 md5: 67e143d0f9acc750d201df7662c57d92 sha1: ee5a84038547f5e45091cddf5c97f1012fc6b512 changes: added hardware description for plipbox nano hardware added schematic and board design for plipbox nano base board added new firmware -nano for new plipbox nano pinout Amiga driver unchanged and stays at 0.3

– plipbox-0.4.zip v0.3 25.5.2013 – plipbox-0.3.zip size: 199269 md5: f64e0d8053ea93634495dfd178b21914 sha1: 6f6dd491556c87b76855193ba36cff23477119cd changes: firmware and Amiga driver update. no hardware change. major redesign: removed NAT device and introducded MAC bridge, i.e. plipbox behaves like an Amiga Ethernet adapter and bridges all packets from there without alteration dropped lots of network code found in plipbox that is not needed for the MAC bridge rewrote and renamed Amiga SANA-II plipbox.device to be an Ethernet driver added a Python-based software emulation for the plipbox that operates with a patched FS-UAE Amiga emulator new approach makes the device zero-conf. Just attach and it works.

– plipbox-0.3.zip v0.2 2.9.2012 – plipbox-0.2.zip size: 158248 md5: 3d5b998f80ce5b48e2c151f756712467 sha1: ed06ce9bdf52911b1d0eeeafd6fef89072423233 changes: added support for AVR-NET-IO board

– plipbox-0.2.zip v0.1 22.7.2012 – plipbox-0.1.zip size: 140029 md5: f16007cb4e09f6adb2a2566b22fb6c84 sha1: 1db80031969395371647e6e974f0dd738e49c79e changes: first public release initial feature set: DHCP, ARP and full TCP/UDP bridging

– plipbox-0.1.zip

The software of the plipbox project is open-source and hosted on GitHub: plibbox@gitbub. Clone this repository if you want to build the firmware yourself or if you want to play around with it.

Documentation

Quick Start Guide

Build the hardware (see Hardware page)

Flash the firmware Connect the device to your Mac/PC via USB only

(no Amiga or Ethernet connection yet!) Flash the supplied firmware file with avrdude (see Firmware page)

Access plipbox command shell via serial terminal Setup your terminal program on your Mac/PC to connect to the plipbox firmware See Firmware page section 2 for details

Test Ethernet Connectivity In the command shell press 3 to enter PIO Test Mode Connect your plipbox to the Ethernet (keep PC terminal connected) On your PC install Python 2.7 and run the pio_test program (python directory in this release): python2.7 pio_test See Firmware page section 3 for details

Test Amiga Parallel Connectivity In the command shell press 4 to enter PB Test Mode On your Amiga run the dev_test program (amiga/bin directory in this release) dev_test -d plipbox.device Now press p in the command shell to transfer packets Press a to toggle auto mode and s to see current transfer statistics See Firmware page section 3 for details

Operation Setup networking on your Amiga (see Amiga Setup page) Connect device to Amiga (keep Ethernet and Mac/PC link) Enable plipbox.device on your Amiga Ping directly from your Amiga (call ping command in CLI): ping a host on your local ethernet (use numeric IP first then name) ping a remote host ftp/telnet/do whatever to test the network Ok, plipbox seems to work!



Have fun!

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