Networking With Beagle Board

Hello,

Can anyone recommend a suitable USB network adapter to use with the Beagle Board? I see the latest version of EtherUSB (0.07) works with the following chips;

• Asix AX88172.
• Asix AX88772.
• MosChip MCS7830.
• ADMtek Pegasus AN986 or AN8511.

Can anyone recommend a brand and model that I can get hold of in the UK?

Thanks, Rob.

P.S. While I’m asking questions, is there any particular brand & size of SD card, that is recommended for the Beagle Board?

The chipset in mine is ADM8515. Try searching for this on google.

I bought something that looked like this and found it contained one of the Pegasus chips. They’re just generic mass-produced USB network adapters that then get branded by different retailers (unfortunately my one had a solid black case instead of transparent blue, which means that you can’t see the indicator light that’s underneath the little lump!)

There’s also been a report that the network adapter in the “Toshiba USB 2.0 Port Relicator II” works, but it looks like that product may be discontinued since I can’t immediately find anywhere that’s selling it.

For SD cards, I think any old SD or SDHC card will do. Obviously a faster or higher capacity card would make sense once we get the drivers for the SD card slot working, but for the moment the only thing you’re likely to store on the card is the ROM image. This guide on the Pandora community blog might be worth taking a look at, merely because it gives a rough guide on how to avoid counterfeit SD cards (although they obviously list prices in dollars, not pounds/euros).

I’m using a Speedlink orginally for the Nintendo Wii. I think most Wii Adaptors work, cause they are build around the Asix AX8772.

I’m looking at buying one of these; Ebay Link

As it states it uses an ADM8515 chip. It looks pretty much the same as the one Jeffrey posted a link to on Amazon.

As for SD cards, I’ll just pickup a branded small capacity card for the moment. If the SD card can’t be used for storage in RISC OS, what is best to use? A USB drive?

Rob.

I recommend the Seagate FreeAgent GO USB hard drives. Just format with !SCSIform defaults.

I recommend the Seagate FreeAgent GO USB hard drives. Just format with !SCSIform defaults.

Are there any limits on size of drive that can be used?

Not sure what the limits are. 250GB ones definitely work.

IIRC, SCSISoftUSB uses SCSI commands Read(10)/Write(10) to read/write blocks, this means that 4 GB*sector size is the limit. In other words, 2 TB for HDs which usually have 512bytes/sector.

However, it would be (nearly) trivial to switch to Read(16)/Write(16) which uses 64bit addressing instead of 32bit.

@Rob: SD cards that are connected with the ‘deloc’ card reader (see hardware compatibility list) can be accessed and be formatted in riscos style – so you can’t read them anywhere else any more ;-).

@Chris: What is the Seagate device for a usb type? I have found USB/atapi bridges non-working (I tested 3 different devices, they were not even recognised as drives).

@Rob again: I bought one of these devices (from amazon) but at the moment I have still problems in making it work. I’ll post here when it works.

It shows up as a USB Mass storage device. (Class 8) Picked up as a SCSI hard drive.

ok, that’s good, Thank you. Maybe I simply had bad luck! Are there any other experiences from Iyonix owners?

There’s a list of USB-ethernet devices using the Pegasus chipset here: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=aue&arch=alpha&sektion=4

It’s a little old, but I managed to pick up a Linksys USB100TX from eBay for the sum of £4 including postage. Uses the AN986.

As it happens, this is very similar to the Linux of devices supported by TiVo:

http://support.tivo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/405/related/1/kw/ethernet/r_id/100041

When I went to look for one, the USB100TX I found (which cosmetically varies slightly from ones on Google image search) was the only device I could find for sale. I also paid a similarly princely sum to Theo.