Category Archives: AmigaOS 4.1

Wireless networking in AmigaOS 4.1 with Vonets Wireless Bridge

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A Sam440EP with Vonets VAP11G-300 ethernet to WIFI bridge

Finally got my Sam440EP that is running AmigaOS 4.1 online with no ethernet cable, wireless, with a Vonets WIFI bridge, no more ethernet cable!!

Currently, I dont have a permanent place for my Sam440EP on my desk at home. That will change in the future. But for now, whenever I want to use it, I set it up on my desk. Since it is a tiny computer, that is not really a problem as its very portable.

But having to run a long ethernet cable between the SAM440EP and the main ethernet switch is such a hassle.

Its not 1999 anymore and WIFI is great these days! So I went looking for a wireless solution for hooking up my next gen Amiga to the home network.

Finding a solution is a bit tricky though. After having spent a couple of evenings researching the topic I decided to order a supposedly supported card by AmigaOS 4.1, only to have it be cancelled by the seller. Disapointed but also relieved because I did not fully expected the card to work – I Instead opted for an ethernet to WIFI bridge.

Thinking, if that works, I could get a second and hook up my A4000TX to the home WIFI network with one also since there is no WIFI card for Zorro Amigas..

Vonets wireless bridge – VAP11G-300

There are a couple of nice solutions for wireless bridges these days and the prices has gone way down since last time I was in the market (2005). The Vonets Wireless Bridge that I got from AliExpress cost around 20 euro.

Setting up the Vonets wireless bridge on the Amiga

Test setup during initial setup of WIFI on the SAM440EP

Setting up the Vonets VAP11G-300 WIFI bridge reminded me why I chose not to go down the network admin/sysadmin route back in my university years. Or it reminded me of how much simple everything these days usually are to set up.

Surprised I was, it did actually come with a real manual (something I did not expect from cheap China stuff)!. However the manual was a bit poor in quality and clarity, I think it was better if it did not come with one.

Anyways, just so that I wont forget how to set it up, here is how to set up the Vonets wireless bridge to be a WIFI bridge for ethernet:

  1. Connect the Vonets wireless bridge to a PC. Connect both USB and ethernet so it gets power and can be found by the computer.
  2. On the Vonets adapter: Green light should come up (that is the ethernet port), blue light should come up (that is WIFI).
  3. Disable wireless on the computer if active. Else you wont be able to log into the bridge. Make sure ethernet is active and not disabled.
  4. Go to Chrome and type in the IP adress as specified on the device to connect to the Vonets bridge.
  5. Disable AP functionality of device and click save (if you dont want to use it as an AP). Device defaults to both an AP and a bridge if not.
  6. Change password of device and save.
  7. Go to main panel and scan for SSIDs.
  8. Chose SSID, type in password and save.
  9. Reboot Vonets device

It wont be possible to setup the device again on the IP number after rebooting the device. If you need to configure it again you need to reset it with the little button on it.

Once rebooted it should now be possible to browse the web on the PC where the Vonets wireless bridge acts as a bridge.

In theory it will work with any device that has an ethernet port. Read on…

Troubleshooting the Vonets VAP11G-300 WIFI bridge

So this is where the fun began (or not if you belong to the ones who do not see sysadmin/network admin tasks as a fun).

At first it did not work at all on my Sam. But it worked fine on my workstation.

I then figured out that if I changed the internet settings in AmigaOS 4.1 in Prefs and saved the new configuration the internet came to life! I thought I had solved it but as soon as I rebooted or restarted AmigaOS 4.1 then network access dissappeard.

I suspected the problem was that I had to configure the Sam to use a static IP, but that was not it either. However I got to familarize myself with subnet masks and ip ranges again, how much fun!

Back of the Sam440EP to illustrate how the Vonets WIFI bridge is set up

Soon I found the problem!

The Vonets adapter takes power from the USB port, the USB port on the Sam is disabled during startup (or delayed) so once Workbench is loaded the network has not fully been initialized. It takes a bit of time for the Vonets adapter to fully start, I suspect it must be running a minimal OS that handles all backend tasks. Which explains why restarting the network works. But until the network in AmigaOS4 is restarted, the network is down.

I decided to run it internally by routing the ethernet cable into the case

I quickly tried to come up with a solution, the solution was to run the adapter from 5v from the internal PSU. And that lead me to wonder if it was possible to place it inside the case too. I could route the ethernet cable through the hole for the VGA port on the Sam backplate.

The Vonets adapter is placed under the SSD on the left side of the motherboard

The Vonets WIFI bridge was placed under the SSD on the Sam440EP motherboard. There are no components on that side of the motherboard so no chips will get cooked as the Vonets adapter heats up a bit and I was worried that I would introduce more heat to the system.

Browsing the web on an Amiga is currently not a fun experience, lets hope a modern browser (and modern hardware is released!)

Would it work, yes it did. The Morex 557 case that the Sam440 is mounted in has mesh sides so signals from the WIFI bridge passes through the case fine (and also aid in ventilation of the setup).

Summary

All in all I am pleased with the setup and will order a second one for my Amiga 4000TX, and my A1200 is already running WIFI with the PicoWyfy. While I am pleased with the setup, much has happened with the web in 15 years. I remember browsing the web back in 2009 on my Pegasos 2 and having a great experience. But the modern web is built on JS and needs SSL. There is no way this 533Mhz system would keep up even if there was a modern browser. While the main goal was not to browse the web but to enable file transfers between fileserver and the Amiga on the local network, I would not mind browsing the modern web on it.

Acube Sam440ep case migration

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Sam440ep motherboard – 533MHz PPC

My Acube Sam440ep motherboard that I have been running AmigaOS4.1 on has been installed in this beautiful Emko case (see picture below) for the last couple of years. I wanted to swap cases with one that had front mounted USB ports since the Amiga Sam440ep motherboard only has two USB ports on the back side (and those are used by the keyboard and mouse).

Here is my Sam440ep mounted in a case made by Emko

Emko is a Czech manufacturer of cases, sadly it does not seem they are making cases for private persons any more, but a couple of years ago they had quite a large offering of small Mini-ITX cases that you could buy. I picked up two of them back then, the one on the picture above and the slightly taller version of the same case. They also had a similar case as the one above available in aluminium, I should have picked that one up when I had the chance, c’est la vie…

Back of the Sam440ep with the steel backplate

Here is the back of the Emko case. As you can see the Sam440ep does not have many ports. There is a serial port, DVI port, S-video port, audio out, two USB ports and two ethernet ports. Not all of these ports are usable in AmigaOS4.1 though. It is possible to hook up more USB ports from the motherboard also. Acube kindly sent the backplate to me for free if I paid for shipping.

The case offers generous ventilation

One of the best things with the Emko case is its well ventilated design, this is a beautiful case for fanless systems such as the 533MHz Sam440ep motherboard.

Migrating the Sam440ep AmigaOS 4.1 motherboard to the Morex 557

Morex 557 mini-ITX case

I have had my eyes on the Morex 557 Mini-ITX case for a while and was happy finding a second hand unit for sale locally. The Morex 557 is a small ITX case, not that much larger than a Mini-ITX motherboard (and actually just a tiny bit smaller than the Emko case). I suspect these type of cases will be much more difficult to find in the future thanks to the popularity of ITX gaming rigs where you need space for a graphics board so if you like small ITX cases, time to hoard up.

Step 1 – Dismounting the old case

There are a lot of screws to unscrew to open up the Emko case

I have set up the Sam440ep with two drives, one 256GB SSD for the Workbench and Work partition and one old 2.5″ 500GB HDD as a data drive. I had this idea to get a larger drive and migrate all Amiga stuff I have to the HDD. That way I would have a backup of all my Amiga hoard of files. That proved difficult though as the FTP program crashed no matter what I tried. Will give it another try in the future but I will definitely retire the slow mechanical HDD sometime in the future.

Step 2 – Prepare installation in new case

Close up of the Sam440ep Next generation Amiga motherboard

The motherboard is a bit dirty, I did not have enough IPA to clean it though, so next time maybe. If I remember correctly, the upper heatsink sits over the CPU and the bottom heatsink sits over the GPU. The 533MHz Acube Sam440ep can run fanless. Believe it or not, for regular Amiga stuff, 533MHz is fast enough. AmigaOS4.1 definiely does not feel slow on this modest next generation Amiga.

Step 3 – Installation in Morex case

The Morex 557 case was a really tight case, the front had to be removed to get the motherboard into the case. Also note the USB headers on the motherboard, they where not keyed so I had to look up pinouts.

Step 4 – Adding SSD and harddrive to the Sam440ep

It was not obvious where to put the storage drives at first – There was holes on the side of the case for 2.5″ units. Here is the SSD mounted to the side with two screws only, it was a tight fit but it aint going anywhere now.

And here is the 500GB harddrive mounted. I will run this until I find a good replacement. This drive has a bad habbit of spinning down which makes it slow whenever you need to access it again, no idea how to disable that and a good reason to get rid of it in the future.

As you see, with both drives mounted there is still space between the for heat to rise and escape the case.

Some words about AmigaOS 4.1 before closing this post…

AmigaOS 4.1 Final edition

So the reason for all this is to run AmigaOS4. The Sam440ep motherboard came out in 2008 (or was it 2009), even back then it was obsolete by PC standards. That it cost as much as a much high perfoming PC of its day made it a hard sell for those outside of the Amiga community.

But the future was bright back then, because of legal problems, there had been no new next generation Amiga hardware for quite some years untill the Sam was released making it difficult to hop on the AmigaOS4 train (as there was no new hardware for sale).

The Sam440ep was the first batch of AmigaOS 4 compatible hardware released by Acube that lead to renewed interest in the next generation Amiga platform. Unfortunately as we look back today, PPC was probably not the right way to go.

The future of Amiga is probably ARM and Workbench 3.*. Thanks to PiStorm, anyone can have a high performance Amiga with “full” compatibility with 68k applications, so IMHO the future of AmigaOS 4 is bleak. But that does not and should not stop anyone from using it.

AmigaOS 4.1 showing Prefs

One of the advantages of a next generation Amiga Workbench is that its a much more updated version of Amiga, both from a software and hardware point of view. There is a TCP/IP stack included, AHI is standard and fonts look amazing on Workbench for example.

At the same time, configuring AmigaOS to your liking from the first installation is a reminder of how far computing has gotten in comparison with the “modern” AmigaOS.

There is a lot of clicking and editing files to get it custom tuned to your liking. Prepare to sit off a couple of days to get it to your liking. And Prefs is unfortunately just a mess by modern standards. But when it is fine tuned to your liking, it is perfect – And most of the stuff is exactly where you expect it to be and where it used to be. And that is the huge selling point of AmigaOS4!

Someone said that AmigaOS4 is for hardcore Workbench users – I can not agree more! This is what everyone was dreaming of back in 1995, and the best thing is, you can get it today (and pretend its 1995 again, if you want to)!

Closing off, my primary use of my Sam440ep next gen Amiga is for PPaint, there is a PPC port of it that runs beautifully on the Sam. If there was a modern browser capable of the modern web available I would not mind running a higher performance next gen Amiga as a daily driver.