Date   : Sun, 24 Jul 2005 19:11:25 +0000
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Re: [Bulk] Re: ARM copros, speech cartridges, real

On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 19:56 +0100, Phil Blundell wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 16:52 +0000, Jules Richardson wrote: 
> > Some sort of external bridge seems a little concerning to me, because
> > it'll need its own CPU and debugging. Sounds like a lot of added
> > complexity (when you could just get a 486 PC running Linux with an
> > Ethernet card in and hang an Econet interface from that if a bridge was
> > needed - the only investment then is in the Econet hardware and
> > associated driver)
> 
> The Econet hardware would still need its own CPU (or a complex FPGA,
> which is probably equivalent from a debugging point of view) to handle
> the low-level protocol bits.  For reasons of latency, it would probably
> not be feasible to have a completely dumb USB dongle with the host CPU
> doing all the work.  (This is the same reason that the original Ecolink
> card had an onboard CPU.)

Ahh, fair enough if true. I thought USB and modern CPU's would be fast
enough to negate the use of local processing to handle things.


> You could add an Ethernet interface to a BBC and use its onboard Econet
> to do bridging, but you'd end up having to write and debug almost
> exactly the same amount of software as for a standalone bridge design.

Yep, agreed there.

cheers

J.