[Coco] IP packets on my coco

[Aaron Wolfe]

I've been wishing for something like this to be connected to a coco for a
long time.  In fact when I learned about these things is when I kind of
lost interest in further DriveWire work... this is just a better solution
imho.

Then while exploring gary's (amazing) work with coco3 fpga, I thought: hey,
now we can connect one of those network stack in a chip things real easily
since the de1 can talk to them.   I talked with Gary and some other
coconuts about this, and as I recall everyone thought compatibility with
'real' cocos was a major concern.  In a small community, it helps everybody
have fun when projects inter-operate.

If you can get the same controller attached to a real coco and the DEx
boards, that's a standard that lots of different projects could use to do a
lot of cool stuff.  Seems worth doing to me.  Have you thought about ways
to avoid being tied to a single controller, or if that matters?

Sounds awesome.  And also major kudos to Brett for the nice work on Fuzix

-Aaron


On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 3:32 PM, Dave Philipsen <dave at davebiz.com> wrote:
>
> The ESP8266 itself.  In a full-blown networking implementation you would
be able to have multiple connections all going at the same time.  This
would be difficult with the ESP8266 as it stands now. The fact of the
matter is, if you use the ESP8266 for a DECB program it will be more than
adequate as you won't be doing any multi-tasking where other programs would
need to access it at the same time.  If you wanted to use it under NitrOS9
which could also require that you write a device driver for it, then you
may have a problem running multiple programs simultaneously that would be
using the internet.
>
> As I said, though, it's possible that someone could re-write the firmware
of the ESP8266 to make it work.  There are already people out there who are
customizing it.
>
>
> Dave
>
>
>
> On 6/6/2016 2:20 PM, Salvador Garcia via Coco wrote:
>>
>> "...Wifi module may be a little restrictive as far as doing full-blown
networking..."
>>
>> Are the restrictions more to do with the implementation of the CoCo on
the FPGA, the DE1 hardware, or the ESP8266 itself?
>> Thanks! Salvador
>>
>>
>>        From: Dave Philipsen <dave at davebiz.com>
>>   To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
>>   Sent: Monday, June 6, 2016 12:35 PM
>>   Subject: Re: [Coco] IP packets on my coco
>>     Gary is working on the support for the Wifi module as we speak.  In
>> fact, he already has some support in his latest test build.  As Brett
>> has already pointed out, the Wifi module may be a little restrictive as
>> far as doing full-blown networking but it will certainly be handy in a
>> general way for doing the most common things like telnet, ftp, email,
>> http, etc.
>>
>> The ESP8266 wifi module is also end user programmable so there's always
>> the option of creating a custom version.
>>
>> I'm thinking that any sort of serial-to-ethernet module is going to have
>> some restrictions (if for nothing else, the bottleneck of squeezing a
>> lot of data through a standard serial port) as opposed to a 'real'
>> ethernet interface.  Although Gary's plans are for a huge FIFO on the
>> Wifi interface which would be very helpful.
>>
>> Some months ago I successfully transferred a file from a PC to a DE-1
>> board using the wifi module.  The DE-1 board was not running CoCo3FPGA
>> but it was a 6809-based computer.
>>
>>
>> Dave