hcliff@wybbs.mi.org (Cliff Helsel) (05/16/91)
Does anyone have information or experience on using the Hydra One board from Hydra Systems in San Jose, California? This board is supposed to emulate a Macintosh SE on a PC. The board lists for $995 plus the cost to acquire Mac ROMS. This is a little too much money to spend if it won't do the job well. Any information will be greatly appreciated. Cliff Helsel hcliff@wybbs.mi.org or hcliff@wybbs.UUCP
aland@hpsciz.sc.hp.com (Alan Davis) (05/17/91)
> Does anyone have information or experience on using the Hydra One > board from Hydra Systems in San Jose, California? This board is supposed > to emulate a Macintosh SE on a PC. The board lists for $995 plus the cost > to acquire Mac ROMS. This is a little too much money to spend if it won't > do the job well. I've seen the prototypes and I was impressed. But I know the designers, so take my opinions appropriately. The Hydra board is most of a Mac SE packaged onto a PC card (a full one, with some custom parts). It intercepts your EGA/VGA signal, and the floppy disk cable. This allows you to read/write Mac floppies in your 3.5" PC floppy, and still be able to use it as a PC device. You run a special program on the PC to make it act as a host to the Mac; pressing the right mouse button causes the mouse to control the screen, moving it left causing more of the Mac screen to slide over the PC screen (the Mac screen slides in from the right). The host software makes the PC's keyboard, serial/parallel ports, mouse and hard disk usable from the Mac. Using it as a Mac was fine. It seems faster than most low end Macs (it has a 16MHz 68K, and the PC is doing hard disk caching). I didn't try cut and paste between the Mac and PC. It can also use a SCSI disk (connector on the Hydra card) as a Mac only device. An Appletalk port is also on the card. Obvious limitations: it is only monochrome, even with a color EGA/VGA. I'm sure there are other quirks, once you get into the nitty gritty details, but I was able to do useful work with it, once I got used to the idea of Mac programs on the PC> Alan Davis aland@hpscdc
dsals@vms.macc.wisc.edu (David Sals) (05/18/91)
In article <477@wybbs.mi.org>, hcliff@wybbs.mi.org (Cliff Helsel) writes... >Does anyone have information or experience on using the Hydra One >board from Hydra Systems in San Jose, California? This board is supposed >to emulate a Macintosh SE on a PC. The board lists for $995 plus the cost >to acquire Mac ROMS. This is a little too much money to spend if it won't >do the job well. > >Any information will be greatly appreciated. > >Cliff Helsel >hcliff@wybbs.mi.org >or hcliff@wybbs.UUCP This may be a stupid question, but maybe not. You can get a Mac Classic for pretty much the same price as the Hydra and the ROMS. Now the classic comes with 2 meg and a 40 meg hard disk. It doesn't have to emulate at all. It has the same processor as an SE in it. Sooooo, why spend all that money and have only one machine (your IBM) which can run the software at a (hopefully) comparable speed, when you could have two (2) machinesvfor the same price, and KNOW that the mac part is compatible with your software? Why tie down your IBM? Just wondering. :-D ave