At a flea market I found a NetProducts NetStation that has been used for
Playstation 2 beta testing. So instead of the Ethernet card it has a dual
serial port podule to connect to the Playstation and an external modem. In
the podule ROMs there is firmware to talk to the Playstation and to dial in
to a provider that apparently was somehow involved in this beta testing.

However, to try to make the thing do something useful I am looking for the
appropriate Ethernet podule. Am I correct in believing that any Acorn 10Base
T card will do, or is the NC/NetStation variant something different
altogether?

Any information or offers for (cheap, second hand!) Ethernet podules is
greatly appreciated. Maybe someone wants to trade his network card for the
dual serial port card...?

Note: I live in The Netherlands, but I have friends living in the UK in
Derby that could be useful as a mailing address location and/or handling the
finances.


Thanks,

Arjan Opmeer

In article <e7239$450aa57f$8259aff0$17464@news1.tudelft.nl>, Arjan Opmeer
<URL:mailto:arjan.opmeer@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm not sure, does it look like a normal size and shape podule that would
physically fit and with a DIN socket in the expected place?

If yes I suspect you would be o.k.

I asked about the shape because we recently acquired a strange i-cubed
10baseT card it is standard podule shape and size but instead of the DIN
connector being a right angle type it is straight and has extended pins.

If you had say a RiscPC with no backplane and where the
backplane connector normally is you put a DIN socket this looks like it
would be the correct shape and size.
The PCB has a P/N 550:0 which I think will be common to some standard Podules.


Which ever type you require we can supply and ship direct to you.

Chris Evans

--
CJE Micro's / 4D 'RISC OS Specialists'
Telephone: 01903 523222 Fax: 01903 523679
chris@cjemicros.co.uk http://www.cjemicros.co.uk/
78 Brighton Road, Worthing, West Sussex, BN11 2EN
The most beautiful thing anyone can wear, is a smile!

In article <e7239$450aa57f$8259aff0$17464@news1.tudelft.nl>,
Arjan Opmeer <arjan.opmeer@gmail.com> wrote:

Nearly 10 years ago as an Argonet shareholder, I was given a free
NetStation NC modem model with smartcard. Since I didn't need it to
connect to the internet, I explored the possibility of converting it to
the network card model. I tracked down the network card to I think Oregan
developments which had the approriate modules for NCOS on the card however
by the time I had decided to shell out the 65pounds they were asking they
had none left. I gave up at that point. However I believe that any Acorn
network podule card should fit but you would need to flash into the RAM on
the card the appropriate modules (eg if it was an Aleph1 card fitting it
to a RiscPC and using the upgrade program to add the extra modules). This
should allow you to boot from a suitble server (CITRIX or similar I think)
softloading the modules necessary to change the 'browser version' of NCOS
to a desktop version. Another approach was to use one of the original
parallel port 100MB ZIP drives (most NCs had drivers for these in the
onboard ROM but not for later ZIP drives) to load in the extra modules.

Jason has some info and pictures on http://www.tribbeck.com/computers/bits/

I'm pretty sure that if the SmartCard reader is removed from its slot at
the front, a PCMCIA card can be inserted although drivers would need to be
installed to read it. I believe that this allowed a different version of
RiscOS on a PCMCIA memory card to replace NCOS in ROM on the motherboard.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_computer
for a bit more info about NCs.


The following very old threads discussed NC - may be available in the
archives on Google
CSA.apps 'Risc OS aplication to NC OS application' Dec97/jan98 (NB a p
missing from 3rd word)
CSA.hardware 'Netstation for a pony' from Oct98
CSA.apps 'NetProducts Netstation' Feb99

Best of luck
Alan

--
--. --. --. --. : : --- --- ----------------------------
|_| |_| | _ | | | | |_ | alan.dawes@argonet.co.uk
| | |\ | | | | |\| | | alan.dawes@riscos.org
| | | \ |_| |_| | | |__ | Using an Acorn RiscPC

Alan P Dawes <alan.dawes@argonet.co.uk> wrote:

It depends on the NC hardware. I have an NC with NC 0.10 (suggesting it's an
early model) which has a normal podule connector - it's the same as the one
depicted here:


I haven't fiddled with it but see no reason why a normal network podule
can't be swapped. Mine has the EtherN card as shipped (and shown there). I
can't remember if there are any special modules concerned with network
booting but you shouldn't need these unless you want to run TopCat or
similar. (The modules list of my NC is here:
http://www.marutan.net/db/products.php?kProduct=27 )

However some NCs have a right angled podule connector so that the podule
sits on top of the motherboard. Those won't be able to take a normal
network podule. I have one of these right angled NC podules somewhere - if
anyone would like to swap it with a normal podule or netslot card let me
know. (Or I could be tempted in other ways, it's doing nothing here)


Careful! The front slot, whilst being of PCMCIA form factor, isn't fully
compatible with PCMCIA. In particular the PCMCIA spec of whatever version
is contemporary (not Cardbus) is 16 bits wide, whilst the Acorn ROM carrier
is 32 bits wide. My NCOS 0.10 ROM carrier has an Acorn custom PCB inside
with 4MB Intel flash chips: it's not an off-the-shelf PCMCIA flash card.

I believe the ARM7500 (or FE variant only?) can support 16 bit wide ROM
accesses so could in theory use 16 bit wide PCMCIA flash, but don't think
this is supported in the NC.

Theo

--
Theo Markettos theo@markettos.org.uk
Clare Hall, Cambridge atm26@cam.ac.uk
CB3 9AL, UK http://www.markettos.org.uk/

Theo Markettos <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

Argh, I'm not being clear here. Normal podules have a right angled
connector so they slot into a vertical backplane. The NC I have has a right
angled connector from the motherboard so the podule slots in in the same
way - the podule lies next to, and in the same plane as, the motherboard, as
depicted in Jason's photos. The arrangement looks like this:

__motherboard____F ]___podule____

The special NC network podule I have has a connector with long (about 1cm)
leads that protrudes from the bottom of the podule. This mates with a
non-right-angled connector on the motherboard:

"__podule___
"
__motherboard____"___m/b_____


I should add I was given the podule for zero-money so am quite happy to give
it away/swap it for zero money too.

Theo

--
Theo Markettos theo@markettos.org.uk
Clare Hall, Cambridge atm26@cam.ac.uk
CB3 9AL, UK http://www.markettos.org.uk/

Theo Markettos <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:


I have such a model as well.


A very nice gentleman from the UK send me an EtherLan 501 card to try in my
NetStation. Unfortunately the two do not seem to play nice together.

The *podules command does not find the card and *rommodules does not list
any extra modules loaded. These commands do work with the dual serial port
card that came with the machine. So I don't think the podule slot is not
functioning.

I dug up my old A340 model Archimedes and tried the card with that. After
some initial troubles like hanging on boot, the card eventually was
recognised and working properly. It was listed properly in the *podules
output and there were extra rommodules loaded.

As I do not have any Internet software on that computer I could not really
test proper networking functionality, but I believe it showed that the card
itself was not defective.

So although both the podule slot in the NetStation and the EtherLan card
seem to be working, the combination of the two does not work and I have not
been able to coax them into working together.

Maybe some knowledgeable people around here have any tips?



Arjan

Arjan Opmeer <ado@dnd.utwente.nl> wrote:

Something in the back of my mind suggests the NetStation podule slot might
be EASI only. There are three ways of accessing podules: podule, module and
EASI which are controlled by the signals PS, MS and EASI respectively.
Podule and module support were provided from the first Archimedes (the A305)
onwards and gave 4K of address space per podule. EASI support came in with
the Risc PC and gave 16MB of address space per podule, and is also faster.

Most podules use podule accesses, with newer ones (like high speed SCSI/IDE)
using EASI too. The best way to check what the NetStation supports is see
whether there's anything wired to podule bus pin c22 (PS) and c6 (MS). If
not, you'll have to find a podule that supports EASI mode.

Actually modifying a PS podule to use EASI mode isn't impossible: you need
to check the chips can cope with the different timing (try it and see) and
hack the software to use different addresses to access it. It's not really
for you if you're not used to hardware and assembler hacking though.

Theo

Theo Markettos <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

OK, I took the motherboard out of the NetStation and there are printtracks
connected to pins c22 and c6.

The dual serial port card that works has no connections to c22 and c6.
The EtherLan card does have connections to those pins.

I plundered my old Archimedes and tested the IDE controller podule and the
MIDI/BBC port podule from it in the NetStation.

The IDE controller podule didn't work, it hung on boot.

With the MIDI/BBC port podule I was able to boot, but the *podules command
reported it as an Acorn Econet card on all 8 positions! (The dual serial
port card is only reported on position 0). Also *rommodules showed no MIDI
module loaded from the card.

So although there are printtracks connected to the right pins it seems my
NetStation does not like older model cards that use the PS and MS signals.

I guess that leaves me trying to find an EASI mode 10BaseT Ethernet card...


Arjan

Arjan Opmeer <arjan.opmeer@gmail.com> wrote:

Interesting. That suggests podule space can be seen from the Netstation.

Try this:

*Memory 3240000
and
*Memory 8000000
(I /think/ those are the addresses for podule slow space and EASI space
respectively for slot 0)

See if you get anything that resembles text in a ROM (it'll probably only
show in the bottom byte of each word and you'll probably need to increment
the numbers to see further addresses before you get to any text)


Looks like it. Though I can't understand why - if the IDE podule is really
old it won't know about EASI mode and if podule/module space wasn't supplied
it just wouldn't do anything or show up (assuming PS and MS were wired high
rather than just left floating). The BBC podule is probably /really/ old
(1980s) so I'm surprised it shows up. It's difficult to suggest anything
else: hardware-wise the NetStation is pretty similar to an A7000, and the
only thing likely to be wrong with the podule bus is Acorn being lazy and
not wiring up a few signals to save a chip or two. But I can't see how that
might cause what you see...

Theo

Theo Markettos <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

OK, had to try this on the Archimedes first to understand what I was looking
for. Only reading the low bytes between all that distracting junk is kind of
tricky...

Reading from 3240000 and up does not show any podules in the NetStation,
only an ever repeating pattern of the same bytes. On the Archimedes reading
from the same area I could find ROM copyright strings etc.

With the dual serial port card inserted in the NetStation I could find the
ROM texts reading from 88000000 and up.

It seems that although there are print tracks to the proper pins on the
NetStation motherboard the bridging chipset does not support accessing the
podule space.

How the old MIDI podule can make it believe there is an Acorn Econet podule
installed I do not understand.


Arjan