Simtec USB

Is anyone using a USB device (of any sort) on the Simtec USB stack? UniPod, USB podule, built into an A9, whatever…

This is just out of curiosity, because I’m just updating my N56FU multimeter app, which supports both Castle/ROOL and Simtec USB stacks. Since I no longer have a working Risc PC, I can’t test whether I’ve broken any aspect of operation with the Simtec stack.

Mind you, the probability of finding someone using a Simtec stack and an N56FU multimeter is probably zero anyway…

Interesting on the production of new Econet podule – I wonder if other podules are planned like the USB.

My RISC PC has a Uni Pod & RO 4.39 but I don’t have anything other than a mouse plugged in.
I have two other RPC with Uni pods and earlier RISC OS.
But no N56FU.
Alan

Colin,
I am not sure exactly what you are saying, but in this context I am very interested to know if anybody got an ADF10 to work on a UNI-POD. It seems possible but I always presumed that this would need a new bit stream file for the fpga or what ever it has. (not in view without some difficulty).

It always amused me, well maybe that’s not the right word, that at best it only seemed possible to ever use half the interfaces one had paid for with the unipod.

At the moment if I was contemplating building a new Econet Podule (which I not) I would be keeping an eye on the work being done over on stardot, particularly the idea of a BBC 1MHze bus interfaced raspi pico emulating a 6854. Its not a huge stretch to get from there to a 2MHze synchronous podule. You might even get the pico to generate the podule id and pretend to be ROM too. (It may be a lot easier to have the pico drive the wait signal and not try to sync with 2MHze..)

https://github.com/arg08/picoeco

Presently I am looking at interfacing picoeco to A Pi directly without 6854 emulation. What is interesting is that the Econet module source that comes with the Pi download is for a podule that as far as I know was never made.

(Way off topic now)

This picture has from right to left
https://app.fieldinsight.com/generic/files/download/c9a51f49-8780-4b76-a3fb-5642f53fe107/
RISC OS Pi3 with my picoeco hat
Linux Pi4 with the ken low ADF10 stack, mosly building the pico code.
Filestore EO1 with a pico on its 2MHze bus internally (hoping to get a port of Beeb scsi)
In the background a nice new PC case with no drive bays at all with a 3 slot ISA backplane, DX5-133 SBC & Acorn Ecolink

My Risc PC is broken at the moment but I only really used the Simtec USB podule for a mouse. I tried it for a bit with USB sticks but the braindead MassFS support (no support larger than 2GB and messing around with the quirks file) made it pretty useless. Lack of RISC OS 5 drivers makes it even less useful (there is some code in PHCIDriver but it’s very incomplete)

It sounds like the N56FU was from Maplin? That was a long time ago…
(although maybe whoever they rebadged them from still makes them?)
Edit: looks like an FS9922-DMM4 chip which can be found in meters like the UNI-T UT61D which is still available.

On Econet, a Pico could probably talk MEMC podule cycles (where there’s an explicit acknowledge signal to terminate the cycle) which would make the timing easier. You’d just hack the RISC OS Econet driver to find its ADLC at an address in MEMC space, rather than the synchronous IOC space.

What do you mean by the Econet module source for a podule that was never made?

Perhaps a USB podule that would work with the A310 and RPc like the simtec castle podules – just a thought.

A podule adapter for the Ti?
Dream on.. :-)

[Edit]
Is it possible to get the rights to reproduce one of the USB podules?

A podule adapter for the Ti?
Dream on.. :-)

The key feature for a podule bus is that it’s a parallel interface, and that’s not generally the way modern motherboards have been going – think USB, PATA replaced with SATA, ISA and PCI replaced with PCI express.

Of those interfaces PCI express is likely the best starting point since it appears memory mapped to the OS, can generate interrupts, can do DMA, so has most of the properties you’d want. Mechanically it’s very inconvenient, because PCIe cards insert vertically along the short edge of the motherboard, while podules are on the long edge and in the same plane as the motherboard. That’d need some kind of L shaped circuit board, or maybe a flexi-rigid.

Probably it’d be more worthwhile concentrating on drivers for PCIe cards instead.

I am not sure exactly what you are saying […] At the moment if I was contemplating building a new Econet Podule

Colin may have been side referencing the recently released Econet NIC as a podule?

I think there was a reason there was little takeup for the Iyonix podule backplane. The majority of podules added something that was either built in to the Iyonix (hard drives, USB, networking) or available as a PCI card. So there was little reason to want to fit them – it’s only oddities that might be of interest (Econet, Tube, Laserdirect, custom hardware for broadcasting). And most oddities never got 32 bit drivers, so couldn’t run on an Iyonix.

I can’t think of a podule I’d want to use on a modern machine, except perhaps to interface to some legacy device not available via USB or PCIe.

Another annoyance is podules have 5V signalling which almost no hardware uses these days, especially the kind of FPGA needed to convert to PCIe. So voltage conversion is needed – this is why the StrongARM card is covered in voltage converter chips.

Seems like a lot of pain for not much gain…

I had the Iyonix podule backplane with a PowerTec SCSI3 and an Irlam 24i16 attached to it. I didn’t get around to doing anything with them, having been slightly hampered by getting rid of all my SCSI devices, and buying a Pinnacle PCI digitiser which did the same job.

Theo,

What do you mean by the Econet module source for a podule that was never made?

The ROOL source for Econet seems to be Bruce Cockburn working on a podule with econet and a user port. I am saying I did not ever see such a thing.

https://gitlab.riscosopen.org/RiscOS/Sources/Networking/Econet
https://gitlab.riscosopen.org/RiscOS/Sources/Networking/Econet/-/blob/master/Documents/Requiremnt
(best viewd on RISC OS for the draw files etc)

Colin may have been side referencing the recently released Econet NIC as a podule?

Maybe, other people have done ADF10 carrier podules, though since this was originally a thread about UNI PODS I was hopeful somebody would know if the econet interface on that was ever made to work.

Its good that there is new econet interface for the RPC that may help a lot of people.

Actually I can’t think of a use case for an econet podule with with the new RPC network socket versions available as all earlier machines take adf10 or its narrower version.

Unless maybe you want more than one econet or both ecocnet and ethernet and an econet podule is easier to come by than Podule ethernet such as Ether 1/2/3,unipod, etc

Unless maybe you want more than one econet or both ecocnet and ethernet and an econet podule is easier to come by than Podule ethernet such as Ether 1/2/3,unipod, etc

Would the econet module handle that?