Ruud Baltissen wrote:
> Hallo Martijn,
>
> Its sounds very neat. I forgot that we use a LAN on the HCC-dagen so this
> neat device could be very usefull as interface between the net and a C=.
Hrmfp. I doubt that. An avarage Linux/*BSD box will doubtlessly outrun
this thing, regarding performance. (If you're able to lay your hands on it,
which is a tale of its own). I suspect that the thing has a major part of
the TCP/IP stack in hardware, which effectively means that you can't
make a router of it easily.
> Question:
> 1) in what way is it available; can you buy it (price), build it?
Honestly, I don't know. The thing I had on my desk was a gift from the
appropriate company (whose name I have forgotten - I'll check that
next Thursday, when I'm @work again) to a certain manufacturer of
lamps in the southern part of the Netherlands.. They gave us an experimental
kit, consisting of the "real" thing (some small module, carrying the
microcontroller and ASIC), and an interface board (containing the
UTP transceiver, MAX232's, voltage regulator...). They *intend* to be selling
the thing at a low price ($10, or thereabouts).
A small serach on Google gave some results. Check
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT7186701822.html
(Not that it is even remotely related to Linux...).
Interesting detail:
"According Jack Schoof, NetMedia's founder and CEO, the P89C51RD2 is so new
that there are not more than fifteen of them in the US, right now. (That's
probably why he wouldn't lend me his prototype SitePlayer to play with!)"
The P89C51RD2 is rather old hat. I've been using the darn thing for more
than 1.5 years now.
> 2) what interface is available towards the rest of the world (RS232,
> parallel)?
RS232 (3-wire interface); and a spare I/O port (8-bits), AFAIK.
It wasn't exactly my purpose to tell you that This Is The Way To Go, but
it might prove to be interesting anyway. If that RealTek chip is available
seperately, I see no reason why a C64 can't have an Ethernet card. A
8051 isn't exactly the worlds fast machine. (allthough the 8051RD2 clocks
twice as fast, "only" having a machine clock of 6 clock cycles. (and
the avarage instruction takes 2 or three machine clocks. Tssk.)
--
Martijn van Buul - Pino@dohd.org - http://www.stack.nl/~martijnb/
Geek code: G-- - Visit OuterSpace: mud.stack.nl 3333
Kees J. Bot: The sum of CPU power and user brain power is a constant.
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