I’ve (finally!) put a new release on the download page.
The major news is that the DEUNA/DELUA component, XU, now has a frontend for wireless network based on ESP32. It’s not completely finished or bug free yet, but I’ve run it with 2.11BSD for about 6 weeks now and it seems pretty solid. Lots more information can be found on a dedicated howto page.
There are also numerous other changes; however, most of these are about MINC or internal changes to improve maintainability. You’ll find much more information in the blog posts between October 11 and December 29, 2022.
In short, this release is mainly about the wireless network. Since that requires a lot of hands-on anyway, for this time I’ll skip distributing pre-built bitstreams – and also I haven’t done all possible release tests. If you’re not going to run the wireless stuff or need the latest MINC additions, you can stick to the older version for now – there aren’t any changes you’d notice.
Curious? Surf to my semi-permanent test setup at http://pdp11.sytse.net/
4 Comments
PMODNIC100 is no longer available. Is there an alternative ?
Hi John,
pmodnic100 is indeed no longer being sold by Digilent. There are some other vendors however that sell boards with the same chip on it (enc424j600) or the variant with more pins (enc624j600). Both will work, you’ll need to sort out the wiring although that should be straightforward. Use the older version in the download if you go this way.
Alternatively you could try the wifi with the esp32c3 – it’s pretty stable and should give similar throughput as the wired version. That doesn’t currently support the native Decnet in some OSes though. For this, you’ll need the latest version on the download, and follow the instructions on the ‘ESP32 XU’ page.
Longer term I plan on adding support for enc28 – the older variant of the enc424 that does ‘only’ 10Mbps, and also no longer made by Digilent – but comparable boards are much more widely available than enc424. I hope to find time for it this coming winter.
Can you point to some example of the enc424/624 boards? I see to be having problems find suitable replacements for the podnic100. Thanks.
Hi Jurgen
there’s for instance this one: https://www.olimex.com/Products/Modules/Ethernet/MOD-ENC624J600/