User avatar
neongod

Posted Thu Jan 18, 2024 7:29 am

I wrote a rather comprehensive guide on how to bring the Amiga 500 online, with a minimalistic approach. I hope it can be useful to others, so I wanted to share:
https://neongod.neocities.org/a500-onli ... sive-guide

For me the appeal in all this was the challenge to make it work with original and authentic hardware, and find the most basic setup possible, so this guide tries to cover that.

It basically boils down to two scenarios:
1. Telnet and the BBS world with the help of a WiModem232 on Kickstart 1.3
2. The broader Internet on Kickstart 2.0+ (PPP connection with TermiteTCP or Miami via a Null Modem cable)

I gave AmigaNOS a try too, but unfortunately I could never make it connect. I would love to make that work, so if anyone succeeded with it, please let me know.

User avatar
neongod

Posted Thu Feb 22, 2024 8:36 am

I managed to configure AmigaNOS so now I can reach my Linux PC through PPP or SLIP from my Amgia 500.

You can Telnet into Linux or use the FTP client to fetch files. It should work on any Amiga 500 with 1MB RAM, a null-modem cable and two floppy drives (You just need to copy the important parts from the archive to a floppy disk).

During my trial and error process I made a "complete" AmigaNOS archive, which I'm happy to share.
It combines the different incomplete archives out there to hopefully create a "full" version.

It has the following:
- The folders from John Heaton's archive (AmigaNOS-2.9i.lha)
- Graham Walter's executable and Gopher client (from AmigaNOSGW6.lzh)
- The sources from the early AmigaTCP archive
- Contents of the AmigaNOS-Tools.
- Workbench 1.3 compatible AmigaGuide and AmigaGuide.library has been included.
- A Doc folder has been added, all the documentation found in the different archives moved there, and renamed to clean up things a bit.
- Added an example NOS-Startup script with PPP and SLIP configuration.
- Added icons for the main configuration files and the executable so it can be launched from Workbench.
- In the AmigaNOS.guide I removed the "Commit suicide" text from the Troubleshooting section, as I found it really offensive and I was not OK distributing that further.
- Added an Installation.readme.

You can download the complete archive here: https://www.jottacloud.com/s/030bd8a491 ... b3220a10ed

I documented how I configured it here: https://neongod.neocities.org/a500-amiganos

Image

What I didn't manage to achive (yet) is to reach the outside world. If I ping my Linux machine, that works nicely. If I ping a domain, I can see that the DNS request is sent to the Linux PC's IP address, but the Amiga doesn't get a reply that it can accept. I'm not sure what's wrong, as it works with the same Linux side settings and iptables rules with Miami (under Workbench 3.1).

Here is how a ping from Amiga to Linux looks in the tcpdump on Linux:

18:04:25.908718 IP 10.0.0.2 > 10.0.0.1: ICMP echo request, id 65535, seq 0, length 12
18:04:25.908893 IP 10.0.0.1 > 10.0.0.2: ICMP echo reply, id 65535, seq 0, length 12

Here is a ping to google, that fails.

18:00:53.311872 IP 10.0.0.2.1024 > 10.0.0.1.domain: 268+ A? www.google.com. (32)
18:00:53.312034 IP 10.0.0.1 > 10.0.0.2: ICMP 10.0.0.1 udp port domain unreachable, length 68

Something seems to be wrong around the ports, like AmigaNOS is sending the request from a different port and not expecting the reply there(?). Is there anyone who has a better knowledge of networking and has an idea what the problem might be?

User avatar
fxgogo
Twickenham , U.K.

Posted Sun Mar 10, 2024 3:58 pm

Amazing guide, thank you. I have been battling with my plipbox to get my A1200 online, so I think there might be some gems of info in here that might help me.

User avatar
neongod

Posted Thu Oct 10, 2024 1:25 am

The issue was apparently around DNS forwarding. It worked well with Miami, but not AmigaNOS. Installing and setting up Dnsmasq in the Linux side to forward all DNS requests to the router solved the issue for me. I updated my guide above on how I set it up.

Now I can access Aminet with the FTP client and the Gopher client works perfectly too. It uses message ports and AmigaGuide as a browser to display the content. The bookmarks are stored in a text file in the gopher folder of AmigaNOS, so it's easy to edit and add gopher holes that are still up.
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User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA
YouTube

Posted Thu Oct 10, 2024 7:54 am

This is fantastic. Congrats on getting this working and thanks for sharing the details of your process.

User avatar
schemescape

Posted Thu Oct 10, 2024 7:44 pm

Yes, thank you for sharing! I hope to attempt this someday...





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