My Plipbox isn't working. Can anyone help?

[Erik765]

Hi all,


I've recently built a Plipbox for my A500 and I'm having a hard time getting pings out to my network or any communication with my router at all.


So far I've tried:


Checking and re-checking continuity between all plipbox components. All the pins and connections are lining up correctly.


Checking network connectivity on the line, using another ethernet device (works just fine)


Using version .5 (which won't work in AmiTCP or Miami (says SANA-II can't find the device))


Using version .6 shows the device as going online in both AmiTCP and Miami (using one or the other), but I can only ping the assigned Amiga IP (all addresses set statically), and the loopback. Whenever trying to ping the router or anything else, I get 100% packet loss.


Using various MTU sizes (1492 - 1518)


When using the Dev_Test utility, I can see the RX light on the arduino light up when sending packets to it, but the statistics show no traffic at all in any direction (and nothing shows up on the Amiga side, but I don't think it's supposed to)


In my router UI, I can see the device connected on the correct port and it shows some packets have moved in both directions, but no IP address is assigned to it (even though I have it set statically), so I'm assuming that's all moving via the ARP (mac address) table?


In the instructions on the plipbox site, you can assign the device an IP in the terminal (set to 192.168.2.222 by default), but I'm guessing this doesn't actually have to be the IP you're using (in all other instructions and videos I've watched they're assigning the Amiga whichever IP they'd like regardless of this setting)


Could it be my Amiga's parallel port? If so, shouldn't the Dev_Test at least show traffic?


Could it be that I'm using cheap clones of arduino and the ethernet shield? (I verified I'm using the correct chip type on the ethernet shield).


At this point, I'm really not sure what else to try and am really hoping someone can point me in the right direction here.


I have a spare Amiga motherboard, but I'd rather not have to take everything apart if I don't have to (and I'd have to borrow the Gary and CPU from my current board)


Thanks in advance.

 

[SM1WZV]

Hi, the device_test function needs a 5V serial connection to pin1 and pin2 on the Arduino board for receive and show any diagnostic information.

There re a minor fault i noticed in the plipbox interface design. When your Amiga needs to perform an restart for some configurations needs, the plipbox are in same state as before and thus gives no network connection. To remedy this behavior the plipbox needs to receive an reset signal or be restarted, I added a reset wire from parallel port pin 16 to Arduino RESET pin. This hack makes the plipbox program restart and to be ready for interaction over the parallel interface after every soft restart of the Amiga not just only cold boots.

Hope this will help you find the problem with your setup.