Zorro III Network/RAM combo card

tnt23

New member
Joined
Oct 29, 2013
Posts
72
Country
Russia
Region
Saint Petersburg
So, here's a project of mine.

It's a Zorro III card combining 64M of SDRAM and 10M/100M Ethernet on the same board. The project was started in 2010 as a way to add more RAM to Amiga 3000, (almost not) known as Z3SDRAM. Later the design was expanded by adding a Fast Ethernet network card built around DM9000 chip.

There's a forum topic on EAB (http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=71457), I'll fetch a few pics from there.


This nice blurred shot shows off Ethernet socket's LEDs. None of them will be lit during normal network operation due to the mistake in schematics. It is also clearly seen that the Ethernet patch cord will have to be connected in a slightly uncomfortable way.

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Here's the board caught in FPGA debugging session:

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A SANA-II compatible dm9000.device has been written (or rather made out of 3c589 sources), which currently seems to be working with AmiTCP and RoadShow TCP/IP stacks. I was not able however to overcome MiamiDx dislike for DNS so only pings and direct IP access have been tested with Miami.

The network performance of the card is rather decent. On an 030@25 A3000 with only 2M of Chip RAM and no Fast RAM and 64M of the said Zorro RAM, NetIO shows speed around 250KBytes/s. Adding Fast RAM improves performance greatly, and together with experimental FPGA SDRAM core running at 133MHz speeds of up to 400KBytes/s could be seen.


Here's the board working hard in my A3000.

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So far, I have built 4 of these. One I am using myself for development and fun, another went to a fellow Moscow amigan, the rest two I am planning to put up for sale here on AmiBay.

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Wait! Is this a 300Mbit Amiga hub or what?!

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gonna bump this since it went unnoticed due to the forum upgrade... AMAZING work! kudos on making those cards!
 
Could USB be added to this? Also, can the cards be made longer or have "fly" leads instead of sockets soldered to the board?
How much would this cost to sell? You could be the next Kipper2k!!:LOL:
 
Wow, fantastic job, need to visit EAB more often. Do you have any plans to build and sell a batch of these?
 
I second the previous statements:
- this is amazing
- 64MB Z3 ram is sweet
- an easy way to connect the RJ45 cable at the back of the amiga without opening the case would be great.

I am on the lookout for a network card for my A3000D, so I'm VERY interested, pending maybe a little maturation.
 
+1 - very nice! I'd be well up for something like this if I decided to beef up my A4000 :)
 
it would be better to have a bracket with a RJ45 socket that connects via a ribbon to the card than to make tha pcb larger and more expensive...
 
Thanks guys, I appreciate your feedback and input... I wrote a post with some of your concerns answered, hopefully it will be approved by moderators. Will copy it abridged:

- I am selling the rest of assembled cards here on AmiBay with further design revision in mind :)
- having full length board would be great, but there is number of things to consider (increased board cost, constraints and limitations regarding Fast Ethernet tracks routing etc)
- yes adding USB will be great, but that's gonna be another design revision (and I've already got some USB host chip samples)
 
Awesome as always tnt23 my friend. Glad to see you on Amibay as well :)
I still remember the first Floppy emulator of yours that was trully l33t!!!
 
I guess getting up early this morning was a good thing
I finally got a chance at some of the cool new stuff!! :D

Chuck E.
 
I just wanted to say how impressed I am too!

I would readily buy one, possibly two.... please take our money :LOL:
 
I would be really interested too!! please reserve one for me :D any plan to have much ram in future?
thank you, great work really!
 
I would be really interested too!! please reserve one for me :D any plan to have much ram in future?
thank you, great work really!

Thanks :) Adding more RAM calls for some massive re-routing work, and will probably make the PCB more expensive. I already have RAM expansion on my todo list, just cannot tell if/when it will be done.
 
I would be really interested too!! please reserve one for me :D any plan to have much ram in future?
thank you, great work really!

Thanks :) Adding more RAM calls for some massive re-routing work, and will probably make the PCB more expensive. I already have RAM expansion on my todo list, just cannot tell if/when it will be done.

no problem then.. i was just curious, i think 64mb would be sufficient. this is really useful because it join two cards in one.. again great project, would be glad to fit one of these inside my A4000 :)
 
BTW, have found that at least some IBM servers used this kind of daughterboard/bracket mount for Fast Ethernet. Perhaps the same approach could be used to keep the PCB small and inexpensive.

1657_600.jpg

Ha, there are even these thingies out there :) Three bucks on eBay.
$_12.JPG
 
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Got some nice benchmarks running on Cyberstorm MK3 with 68060@50MHz:

NETIO - Network Throughput Benchmark, Version 1.32
(C) 1997-2012 Kai Uwe Rommel

UDP server listening.
TCP server listening.
TCP connection established ...
Receiving from client, packet size 1k ... 947.98 KByte/s
Sending to client, packet size 1k ... 659.21 KByte/s
Receiving from client, packet size 2k ... 1057.02 KByte/s
Sending to client, packet size 2k ... 895.88 KByte/s
Receiving from client, packet size 4k ... 1119.78 KByte/s
Sending to client, packet size 4k ... 1269.84 KByte/s
Receiving from client, packet size 8k ... 1183.08 KByte/s
Sending to client, packet size 8k ... 1380.43 KByte/s
Receiving from client, packet size 16k ... 1212.76 KByte/s
Sending to client, packet size 16k ... 1411.63 KByte/s
Receiving from client, packet size 32k ... 1207.01 KByte/s
Sending to client, packet size 32k ... 1427.19 KByte/s
Done.
 
Amazing work, got to agree with the above, if anybody could come up with an "all in one" card for Zorro Amigas that provided RAM/USB/LAN they would sell like hot cakes! Currently we have to buy three separate expensive cards to achieve this basic setup (n)
 
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