http://www.msx.ch/ftp/Products/Network%20catridge/Info/network.pdf

Any news on this product?

Interesting question! Who of you is waiting for this ethernet interface to appear and who is actually going to buy one? I for sure will!

yay

Easy transfer of samples from pc->msx .. yay! ... easy backup from msx to pc .. yay!

extra ram suplied.. yay!

ergo: yay !

Long time ago I would have said 'YAY! I want it!'. Now I'm quite satisfied with Compactflash. So, whether I'll buy one or not depends on the other things I can do with Ethernet on MSX, hence: which software is available.

Ah, who am I kidding. I'll buy one anyway

I would buy one if the software on msx would support mounting directorys from PC side as virtual HD

I'd buy one for sure !! - if the price is not totally crazy, of course

I had a phone talk with Rob a few days ago and he told me the first thing they want to have working smoothly is the mapper they're going to add to the ethernet card to use as main buffer for the received data. Once that's done the rest is implemented quite simple. Unfortunately things take delays as there are also requests to make Gfx9000 cables and repair defect Moonsounds. Luckilly some protective measures were taken in the later series to prevent the OPL4 and the DAC from breaking down due to shortcircuit.

Rob has contact with some people to make cables to reduce the amount of pressure on Koen, who's doing the Sunrise hardware development.

I guess any corrections will be posted by Rob himself.

I'll buy it.

And then, suddenly, there was ObsoNET. 40 bucks for an ethernet card on MRC. And it will be released in October 2004. InterNestor will support it.

Will Sunrise Ethernet and ObsoNET be compatible? Will the same software support it? Are you going to buy both? Are you going to buy one and forget about the other? So many questions, all of a sudden...

I think it will, see my post in obso net ..
Since the same ethernetcontroller will be used.
The extra's we have are the mapper and the way the speed up with the ez80

The memory mapper is nice of course for the people who would like to have a memory mapper integrated. The other feature seems to be the eZ80 co-processor offering a TCP/IP API, but as I think I have said before, I don't really care much about that.

To be honest, it seems that realtek controller alone already has all the functionality that is needed from my point of view (mainly: buffering). All the rest is a software issue.

That doesn't mean you guys should drop the ethernet controller project of course, but... Well, either go for the fast-to-develop-but-less-complex thing (maybe you can even cooperate and use the ObsoNET design, becoming a Dutch manufacturer/distributor for it) (which should offload their work a bit too), or you still do your own thing and see if there is a market for it. There probably is (you offering Dutch support and all, and the integrated mapper is also nice), but problem is: they will release at the end of October, and the release date of the Sunrise Ethernet is still unknown... So there is kind of a time-pressure now. Because if many people already have an ethernet controller, they're probably not going to purchase it again, in effect making your market smaller.

Btw, try to be port-compatible with ObsoNET which should make it easy to support. Although if not it wouldn't be a huge obstacle because it is (just like Erix Fossil) just a matter of creating a new 'driver' and all software using that driver (such as Internestor) will be able to use it. But still...

Anyways, to be honest, I am not surprised someone else came out with an Ethernet card ahead of you... It just takes so long, while a simpler design using only the functionality of existing ethernet controllers is so much easier to create and has a very nice feature-set already.


~Grauw

Yeah, maybe it's better to go for the simpeler design now. I don't think that should mean you drop the more fancy design. I mean: when people start using the "simple" ethernet controller and get used to it, some probably want higher speeds and more functionality later on.

oKE , thanks for the support to continue. The ethernetcontroller itself is the same namely the realtek 8019 AS , exactly the same!
As I already offered Konamiman to let know because I can buy those realtek's for about 3.50 USD a copy. And we can ofcourse make the PCB in that way that the components can be added later on
And it would mean that we can help with producing ofcourse , I cannot guarantee at the moment cause koen is on holidays , me too but I stay at home
So a dealership, distributor I think it would be possible