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new ethernet/wifi card?

J

josephdaniel

Experienced Member
Joined
Jul 3, 2012
Messages
317
Location
Florence, Texas, United States
Has anyone here ever given any thought to making an XT-WIFI card for 8 bit systems? I don't know if this would even be possible but it would be really cool (even cooler if it had Ethernet jacks on it too) ! I know there is an enormous mount of talent here! There could be something like a custom piece of software that you run with the card in place and you select from a list of available networks or you could configure TC/IP settings and what not...

Just a thought ;-)
 
Bleh.. took a while to find but Mike Chambers did a cute little hack like you were already thinking using a wireless router and mounting it inside the case lol. Regarding an actual 8-bit wifi card, I'm no smart engineer guy but I'm not sure if an XT would be able to handle the packet load.. I suppose one could have a coprocessor on the card though which handles the ops.
 
There are plenty of Ethernet and WiFi add-ons for microcontroller systems. I don't see why any of them couldn't be adapted to the ISA bus or even prallel port.
 
One can also use an 8-bit Ethernet card and an Ethernet -> Wireless bridge like the Linksys WET11. Such wireless bridges are often configured through a web interface, so Lynx from DOS could be used to establish wireless connections.

GottaLottaStuff said:
I would think an XT would at least have the processing power of a printer. :)
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You'd likely be surprised!
 
Actually I would doubt that it would have that more power... as barythrin said there could be a co-processor on-board. I tried doing a dd-wrt wifi bridge with my nic. I could telnet into it and login but I could never figure out the commands...
 
josephdaniel said:
Actually I would doubt that it would have that more power...
Click to expand...

Even the original HP LaserJet sported an 8 MHz Motorola 68000! Unless it's an impact printer, there's a good chance it's on par or surpasses the processing power of an XT. That said, it'll still most likely handle 802.11 wireless, if an adapter and drivers can be provided.

josephdaniel said:
I tried doing a dd-wrt wifi bridge with my nic. I could telnet into it and login but I could never figure out the commands...
Click to expand...

That's a good approach to take. IIRC, dd-wrt is just Linux for a select group of wireless routers. There should be a fair number of detailed guides on its use out there.

I'd considered doing a similar thing using PC Engines WRAP.2B boards -- they're 266 MHz x86-compatible embedded single board computers with an Ethernet interface, Mini-PCI slot (for wireless), and serial interface. One could connect the Ethernet interface to the PC's Ethernet card, and control it via serial console on the serial port. I used such a device during college when I was living off-campus, as my housemates all used wireless Internet, but I wanted a wired switch in my room.
 
glitch said:
Even the original HP LaserJet sported an 8 MHz Motorola 68000! Unless it's an impact printer, there's a good chance it's on par or surpasses the processing power of an XT.
Click to expand...

Sometimes not even then--the Tally dot-matrix printers used an 8088--I don't recall the speed, however.
 
I know nothing about microcontrollers but I'm happy to do PCB layout if someone else can do the schematic.
 
Yeah he knows, he's suggesting you use a bridge. This is something you could do right now rather than requiring a project.

You could even just use a small dd-wrt router in bridge mode, right next to the XT, it'd give you a bunch of physical network ports wherever you put it but connect to the internet/main network wirelessly (so you can move it anywhere).

I did this for my TV/media centre - it has a router with wired ethernet plugs (WDTV Live, Xbox, PS3, media server etc etc) that works as a bridge to link the two sides of our house together without running a big cable right through my lounge. I plan to just run a big cable under the house at some point, but for the moment the wifi bridge works wonders.
 
josephdaniel said:
The idea was to have something that is completely wireless since not everyone has Ethernet wired through their house or is near their router.
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Umm, yes, I believe Wifi is indeed wireless but I don't see any way around a conductive medium of some sort between the antenna and your PC... ;-)

As Spider says, you can use an ethernet card or adapter into a wireless router in bridge mode (they don't all support bridge mode with the standard firmware); there are also 'universal' mini ethernet Wifi devices that can be configured to be a bridge, an access point, etc., or you can get direct RS-232 to Wifi bridges (without the wired ethernet in between).
 
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I don't think it gets much better than the wifi bridge idea. Even if you designed an 8-bit ISA wifi card, you'd have to put so much logic on the card itself that you might as well have a whole router.
 
I had an idea concerning this request that, while requiring external hardware, might not require an Ethernet card. Updates to follow.
 
I also had a thought - perhaps what we really need is an 8-bit ISA USB card with flash ROM. Then all these kinds of projects could be moved to the software layer.
 
pearce_jj said:
I also had a thought - perhaps what we really need is an 8-bit ISA USB card with flash ROM. Then all these kinds of projects could be moved to the software layer.
Click to expand...

Someone had done a 16-bit ISA USB host, at least engineering samples were available for a while. That would be one method of attachment. You could also do 8-bit ISA PCMCIA.
 
glitch said:
Someone had done a 16-bit ISA USB host, at least engineering samples were available for a while. That would be one method of attachment. You could also do 8-bit ISA PCMCIA.
Click to expand...

Really in so far as getting a "all in one card that does wifi" on an 8-bit bus, an 8-bit compatible PCMCIA interface with a PCMCIA wifi card would be the easiest to cobble together from existing parts.

Getting DOS drivers that not only understand the PCMCIA bridge, but also see and configure the pc card wifi module might be problematic.

I'm a big fan of using wifi bridge modules to connect hardwired hardware onto wireless networks. The host needs not understand a thing about wifi, just the ethernet and protocols that you'll be running on the network. It is by far the simplest solution to what is honestly a simple problem. Some of these are very small, and have such low power requirements (typically with a 5-12vdc wall wart) that you could cobble to run from power internal to the machine that will be connecting to it, and velcro it to the back of the machine.
 
My point was really that there have been several "what about a card to do XYZ" threads recently, all of which could be answered with an XT-USB card and appropriate drivers. Using a SoC solution like this, perhaps (to pluck a random example).
 
That's a very slick idea too. Moving the driver and solution to firmware and solving the hardware connections to multiple devices. Pretty good homebrew community supported project.
 
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