AMIGA LINK
15 messages in this thread
Hi all.
I have two computers AMIGA 500 and the possibility to get other
three AMIGA 500 from my friends. I'd like to connect all the
machines together and have the possibility to play some games
each player using his video. Some like the cable to connect two
Amigas to play Falcon or some other softgame, but extended to
5,6 computer together. Is there anyone who can help me referring
any name of hardware to connect the machines or any software that
can support this connection. Please be detailed in the answer.
Tnx in advance, best regards
Riccardo
The only way *I* know of to hook multiple (more than 2) machines together
is with a network. With A500s it would have to be Commodore's ArcNet
boards or PP&S' Doubletalk (Appletalk) boards. The only game I know of
that supports networking is RoboSport by Maxis. It will allow upto 4
players to play using their own video via Commodore's TCP/IP v2 software
and KS/Workbench 2.04 or greater.
That is not cheap. (About $300 per machine for hardware and software.)
Good luck.
-Chas
Charles, many games also support play via modem. If the Telecommunications
program allows use of a null modem hookup, Riccardo might use A-Talk III
with one multi-serial card, plus two or more additional modems to create a
local network for the purpose.
Regards, Whap!penned…
Pat @Oxxi (310) 427-1227
Hmmm, now there is a thought. Still, playing via multiserial ports will
only allow 2 player games — granted *multiple* two player games, and you
probably have to run multiple copies of the progam at the same time.
Modem games are my favorite, as people are much less predictable than my
computer. I like RoboSport because you can play upto four people in one
game using TCP/IP. (Haven't tried it yet. I have played via modem,
though.)
-Chas
There are sick and twisted people who link multiple machines using ParNet
and serial links, linking serial to serial and parallel parallel. I
imagine this would work for a game, if it were programmed that way. I'd
bet you could do a slow network using the joystick ports, too, with more
custom hardware and software.
You could do a halfway decent network using MIDI interfaces too….but
that ranks under the "sick and twisted" category you mentioned. :*)
Steve
Steve:
Now that sounds like my kind of network. Do you have any more info on how
I'd do this? (Midi network)?
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
Setting up the hardware is easy….it's just a matter of software. That's
the hard part. If I had access to a few machines to try this with, I'd
try it myself, but right now I have too many other things on my plate that
have higher priority.
This idea is nothing new, of course. The Atari ST folks who did the
program Midi Maze used (as the name implies) the MIDI ports on that
machine to communicate. Great game, by the way. 🙂
Steve
Well, I guess that means that another name for "MIDI" is "AppleTalk." 🙂
Isn't MIDI limited to about 31Kbps? That would yield a top throughput of
about 3Kbytes/sec. Yuck.
Appletalk acheives much faster rates than MIDI; They are not the same just
because they are both 'serial'.. that is very simplistic thinking. Even
Ethernet is based on a serial principle, and that is certainly in a whole
other class of performance.
Depending on what you want to do, MIDI rates might be fine. Commodore 64
users survived with 1200 baud disk drives for many years. 🙂 I disagree,
RS-422 and MIDI are very similar, yes, the baud rates are different, but if
you want to get technical, everything in the world is a little different.
🙂
Under that reasoning, I suppose ARCNET would also be "sick and twisted" (if
what you are referring to is speed). PARNET gets better than 60K/sec
throughput, which compares to the ARCNET (PC) setup at my work which barely
gets 80K/sec throughput, despite the 250K/sec rating of the hardware.
No, when I made that comment, I just meant that it's a bit weird to try to
set up a network over MIDI. It's not impossible….just weird. 🙂
Steve
Oh, well I certainly agree with 'weird'. <g>
I read somewhere that there is no reason why PARNET couldn't be
daisy-chained (ala SCSI) with much more than 2 machine on the network.