I am now pleased to announce that the Trinity Ethernet Interface is now available! The concept of Trinity it to bring ethernet to your Sam with the goal of getting the Sam onto the Internet. The interface consists of three main sections - hence the name Trinity.
The first and most important part is the ethernet controller, a self-contained chip to deal with the communication side of things. The second section is a 128K EEPROM which is used for storing settings for ethernet enabled applications as well as the general ethernet configuration. (This was originally just 8K as announced in Sam Revival, but having kicked the idea about a bit with other people I've now gone for 128K). The third section is a card slot for MMC and SD flash memory cards to expand the memory of the interface, as well as being another means of mass storage for your Sam files. And all three peripherals are linked to the Sam via a microcontroller which acts like a central hub.
The interface comes with a programming manual outlining how to access the hardware and all the I/O programming gubbins, and two disks - the first with some test routines for checking the eeprom, mmc/sd flash, and the ethernet controller. The second disk comes with the setup routines to format the eeprom, and set MAC address, IP, Gateway, DNS etc.
Trinity Update
MMC / SD Flash Card Support
B-DOS has now been patched to use the MMC / SD card slot on the Trinity Ethernet Interface for mass storage. My thanks to Edwin Blink for saying it was fine to patch B-DOS. This is bundled as a third disk with the Trinity.
What I've done is patch version 1.5a to utilise the Trinity's MMC/SD slot, letting it use MMC and SD flash cards up to 1GB in size. The next update will include support for 2GB cards, which use a different sector size.
Ethernet TCP/IP Stack
Adrian Brown is still hard at work with his port of the uIP TCP/IP Stack. He's been making excellent progress with the testing - most recently the ACK and SYNC communications to establish a TCP connection. Adrian's now finishing off the routines to use for applications to interface with the TCP/IP stack code, and a simple application to test it all out and demonstrate the code in action. Things are tantalisingly close to completion! Once the port of uIP is complete then there are several developers keen to get started on giving the SAM some full internet applications!
Quick Ordering
Trinty Ethernet Interfaces are ready built up in stock, and as requested by website visitor here are some quick PayPal links to order the interface - you don't need to have a PayPal account, orders can be made by debit/credit card securely through the PayPal checkout when you click the 'Buy Now' buttons. The Trinity is priced at £69.99, and postage is £4.80 for UK delivery by Royal Mail Special Delivery or £6.80 for Insured EU Delivery.
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