User avatar
iljitsch

Posted Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:26 am

Hi all, this will be some preliminary market research. 8-)

I'm thinking it's possible to create a small system from mostly off-the-shelf parts with some additional software that would be able to do one or more of the following:

  • Let 8-bit computers save files to the device as if it's a cassette drive
  • Connect to a Commodore 8-bit machine using the IEC serial bus and act as a very large disk (no 1541 compatibility, though)
  • Connect to a any computer with a serial port (and the Commodore 64) and let those connect to BBSes on the internet through telnet
  • Connect to any computer with a serial port and provide a BBS-like interface for downloading and uploading files to/from the device
  • Connect to any computer with a serial port that has a networking stack and act like a dial-up modem for connecting to the internet and FTP'ing files to/from the device
  • Connect to an Amiga over the parallel port for faster internet connectivity and file transfers to/from the device
  • Provide a web interface to modern computers for managing files and settings
  • Let modern computers (and networked Amigas) access files through the SMB protocol
A big advantage of this device over something like SD2IEC or a Gotek would be no need to move SD cards or USB sticks between the different devices, as the device connects to Wi-Fi.

For Amigas the network access would be pretty slow compared to a Zorro card or PCMCIA network adapter, but the advantage would be easy Wi-Fi connectivity, and compatibility with all Amigas.

Would you pay something like $60 for such a device?

Or suggest a different price.

Pricing may differ according to the cables you require. I'm thinking there would be 3.5 mm connectors for the cassette functionality and a serial port, but possibly special cables required to connect to the Commodore IEC and user ports and possibly for the Amiga parallel port.

This could be a Kickstarter project.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Mar 28, 2022 8:36 am

I would potentially be interested. The biggest What-About from me would be when used on an Amiga, would it require the installation of a TCP/IP stack? If that's the case my interest may fall lower. TCP/IP setup on Amiga is a bit of a blackhole for me. It ups the ante on hardware and OS requirements, and even getting it setup correctly sometimes requires deep study of How-To articles.

I have WiFi modems connected to all of my C= machines and using them for telnetting to BBSes is already really great. The file browsing and file management features you mention are very intriguing, though.

The price seems reasonable based on the hardware and software feature set.

User avatar
iljitsch

Posted Mon Mar 28, 2022 8:53 am

Well, the idea is that the Amiga connects to the device using its serial port. Then one thing you can do is run dial-up/PPP and get networking, but that of course requires a good deal of software infrastructure on the Amiga side.

Or just not do that and use a terminal program and you'll get a BBS-like interface for connecting to remote BBSes using telnet (or SSH) or use Xmodem/Zmodem to download/upload files.

The latter would be a really good option for unupgraded A1000s and A500s as well as A2000s without a harddrive. For those, you could have a terminal emulation program run off of a single floppy and then still be able to download new software and write that to floppies. (Although I guess only having 1 MB RAM could be a challenge for making that process work.)

There is an existing driver for networking over the parallel port. It should be possible to write software that will make downloads much faster using a parallel port cable without using a network stack, using just a terminal program like setup.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Mar 28, 2022 11:45 am

Or just not do that and use a terminal program and you'll get a BBS-like interface for connecting to remote BBSes using telnet (or SSH) or use Xmodem/Zmodem to download/upload files.
Does that mean the custom software you provide would work with pre-existing wifi modems, too? Heck I'd be down for buying the software if the devices were redundant.

User avatar
iljitsch

Posted Tue Mar 29, 2022 2:38 am

Well, you'd have to run that software on something.

My original thinking was to create a product based on a Raspberry Pi, which is a pretty capable computer so it should be able to handle this no problem. I guess it's possible to make the software run on a "regular" computer such as a desktop Linux machine, a Windows PC or a Mac, but that would be a hassle and you wouldn't want to keep a big rig running for such light duties.

(Although it would be fun to run this on an Amiga!)

But perhaps it does make sense to focus on the software first, letting people bring their own hardware, and then see if there's interest in a full hardware+software solution.

Not sure if selling software that is easy to copy is workable these days (back in the day this could have been shareware) and I do think this would be a large enough project that I'd have to do it for pay rather than just for fun on the side.

But perhaps it makes sense to do this as a Kickstarter so I can get paid for my time and then release the software as open source afterwards.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Mar 29, 2022 7:41 am

(Although it would be fun to run this on an Amiga!)
Ah - I totally misunderstood. I thought your intention was to indeed write software that would run natively on Amiga.

User avatar
iljitsch

Posted Tue Mar 29, 2022 8:41 am

No, the idea is to provide a service that lets retro systems talk to modern stuff in the way those retro systems are used to.

The reason: building one (modern) system is easier than building software for a bunch of different retro systems.

So just fire up an Amiga (or Atari or even C64 and probably a few others) terminal emulation program and start talking to the serial port. You then either use a menu to connect to external services such as telnet BBSes, or browse files on the local device BBS-style and download or upload files using X-modem or Z-modem as desired.

I'm not sure just yet how I would go about building such a system, but if it's in standard C using standard networking calls, there's no reason it couldn't run on the Amiga in addition to a Pi or any other modern system. However, the system the software runs on would need a good amount of local storage and be connected to the local network and the internet, so in most cases, Amigas wouldn't qualify.

User avatar
McTrinsic

Posted Tue Mar 29, 2022 12:34 pm

Sound interesting.

So basically something like this?

Cheers,
McT

User avatar
iljitsch

Posted Wed Mar 30, 2022 6:50 am

That thingy is the basis of a serial-to-Wi-Fi adapter. That's a good start.

But with such a device, how do you actually get software and data on your Amiga? I guess there are BBSes that you can reach through telnet that will let you download software. But unless you want to run your own BBS, that doesn't help you get your own stuff on and off your Amiga.

So that's why I think some additional software is needed, which basically lets you run your own private BBS for the purpose of downloading/uploading the files of your choice.

User avatar
McTrinsic

Posted Wed Mar 30, 2022 12:10 pm

I’ll try to translate that for me 😆.

I’d be interested in a device that could on one side access my server via NFS or smb.

On the other side, it would be accessible from retro computers and offer a telnet-/terminal- compatible interface that would translate the network access to smb to the terminal emulation.

I’d start with a raspberry to provide this kind of software. If, for example, you have an Amiga with plipbox or similar, you could connect the Amiga to this device.

Once that runs stable, you could offer expansions for serial or parallel or whatever.

All under the assumption that I understood you right.

And while we‘re at it: it would be awesome to be coupled with a local http->https translator. So that I could go browsing with my 030 Amiga again 😍.





Return to “Modern Take”