timha@microsoft.UUCP (Tim HARRIS) (11/28/90)
This has probably been covered umpteen million times but bear with me and e-mail any comments. I have had an Amiga now for about 3 years. My current system is an 500 with 1Meg, hard drive and 2 floppies. I have given some thought recently to buying a new system, since I now work on PC's at work I thought of getting a PC Clone but hate the thought of not having my Amiga around for most of what I do at home, which is video work. I know I'll give my kids the 500 anyway but then I started thinking about an Amiga 2500 with a 286 bridgeboard so I could have my Amiga and my PC at the same time. Here are my questions: 1. How much RAM can the 286 access? Is RAM in excess of 640K viewed as Extended or Expanded? 2. What video mode is supported or emulated with this thing, standard VGA or worse. Standard VGA is even the pits really but could do. 3. Does the DOS side use your standard 3" drives or do you need to put a 5" in? 4. Can you in any way share a hard disk or would you need a seperate DOS HardCard or something? 5. Has anyone run Windows on this beast and if so does it really work? I just want to be able to do some programming work at home if I need to so Windows is crucial, VGA is pretty much desired and Windows sort of means I need > 640K anyway I guess. Thanks in advance for all the help. Tim Harris (timha@microsoft)
peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY) (11/29/90)
In article <24@microsoft.UUCP> timha@microsoft.UUCP (Tim HARRIS) writes: > > This has probably been covered umpteen million times >but bear with me and e-mail any comments. I have had >an Amiga now for about 3 years. My current system is >an 500 with 1Meg, hard drive and 2 floppies. There are systems like "ATOnce" with an 286 to be built into the A500. > 1. How much RAM can the 286 access? Is RAM in excess of >640K viewed as Extended or Expanded? It comes with 1 MB. You can use SETUP to configure the upper 384 KB as Extended RAM. You can plug in additional memory expansion cards. > 2. What video mode is supported or emulated with this >thing, standard VGA or worse. Standard VGA is even the >pits really but could do. Sorry, it only provides CGA and Text, but you may put in an additional VGA board, but then you also have to connect an additional monitor. > 3. Does the DOS side use your standard 3" drives or do >you need to put a 5" in? No, it doesn't use the existing Amiga 3.5" drives. Normally it comes with an own 5.25"/1.2 MB floppy, but you can also SETUP it to use a common 3.5"/1.4 MB floppy. > 4. Can you in any way share a hard disk or would you need >a seperate DOS HardCard or something? Yes, you can share either a PC/AT side HD and make up an own partition on it for AmigaDOS, or you can share an Amiga side HD, where you can set up a file as a pseudo HD partition for use under MS-DOS. > 5. Has anyone run Windows on this beast and if so does >it really work? I heard about problems with the mouse driver for Windows 3, but don't know details. As I remember, older versions should do. BTW, there is software to use the Amiga mouse as a MS compatible mouse also on the PC side. Software is provided that enables you to easily transfer files from PC to Amiga and back. The 2286 comes with an own clock on board, but may choose to use the Amiga clock through provided software. And the Amiga parallel port can be used as normal LPT1: from the PC side. The serial port can't be used from the PC side, you would have to plug in an I/O board. But be sure to NOT use any of addresses or interrupts for COM2, these are reserved for the internal PC/Amiga communication. -- Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel // E-Mail to \\ Only my personal opinions... Commodore Frankfurt, Germany \X/ {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!cbmger!peterk
tensi@informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Thomas Tensi) (12/05/90)
In article <599@cbmger.UUCP> peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY) writes: > In article <24@microsoft.UUCP> timha@microsoft.UUCP (Tim HARRIS) writes: > > 5. Has anyone run Windows on this beast and if so does > >it really work? > > I heard about problems with the mouse driver for Windows 3, but > don't know details. As I remember, older versions should do. > > BTW, there is software to use the Amiga mouse as a MS compatible > mouse also on the PC side. I can add the details, because I was the one posting about the problems with WINDOWS 3.0. The AMOUSE.DRV driver for WINDOWS 2.03 works correctly with that version of WINDOWS. When using it with WINDOWS 3.0, the following problems occur: - The system can not be started in standard mode (i.e. protected mode of the 80286). The startup screen appears, but after a while the "C>" prompt reappears. - In real mode the mouse works, but anytime the graphics mode is changed, the system hangs. Normally this is no problem for WINDOWS applications, but it is whenever you call a non-WINDOWS application (e.g. WordPerfect) or when you leave WINDOWS. The problem can be definitely accounted to AMOUSE.DRV because all is ok when you either use no mouse at all (good luck :-) or using a PC-mouse with a serial card. Hope this helps Thomas Tensi ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thomas Tensi, Institut fuer Informatik, Technische Univ. Muenchen, Arcisstr. 21, 8000 Muenchen 2, Germany | E-Mail: | tensi@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (X.400) | tensi%lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de@relay.cs.net (arpa/csnet) | tensi%lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de@unido.uucp (uucp) | tensi%lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de@ddoinf6.bitnet (bitnet)
harding%b56vxg.dnet@kodak.com (JON HARDING) (12/06/90)
Path: b56vxg.dnet@kodak.com!harding From: harding%b56vxg.dnet@kodak.com (JON HARDING) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.amiga.hardware Subject: Re: 286 Bridgeboard Summary: Date: 5 DEC 90 15:13:58 Expires: References: <24@microsoft.UUCP> Sender: Reply-To: harding%b56vxg.dnet@kodak.com Followup-To: Organization: Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester NY, USA Keywords: bridgecards, 286 News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4 In article <24@microsoft.UUCP>, timha@microsoft.UUCP (Tim HARRIS) writes... > > This has probably been covered umpteen million times >but bear with me and e-mail any comments. I have had >an Amiga now for about 3 years. My current system is >an 500 with 1Meg, hard drive and 2 floppies. I have >given some thought recently to buying a new system, since >I now work on PC's at work I thought of getting a PC Clone >but hate the thought of not having my Amiga around for >most of what I do at home, which is video work. I know >I'll give my kids the 500 anyway but then I started thinking >about an Amiga 2500 with a 286 bridgeboard so I could have >my Amiga and my PC at the same time. Here are my >questions: > > 1. How much RAM can the 286 access? Is RAM in excess of >640K viewed as Extended or Expanded? As much as any other 286 I think 8Meg. RAM above 1024K is extended. Expanded depends on what expansion board you use for memory. > 2. What video mode is supported or emulated with this >thing, standard VGA or worse. Standard VGA is even the >pits really but could do. A2286 does (gasp) CGA only, but you can add a VGA board if you want. (Letsee that leaves one PC slot- now a disk or a serial board hmmmm.) > 3. Does the DOS side use your standard 3" drives or do >you need to put a 5" in? Uses supplied 51/4 inch 1.2M floppy. Third party stuff claims to do things with the 31/2 microflops. MJ Systems claims to have for sale a board which wii make the PC think it has two 720K drives, however, I have ordered twice and still haven't received any hardware! > 4. Can you in any way share a hard disk or would you need >a seperate DOS HardCard or something? IMHO this is where the Amiga really shines. You can buy a cheap DOS disk (big) and create a real Amiga partition on it. Performance is acceptable. You can buy a reasonably priced SCSI DMA or other and share its space with the PC through a file server process; performance stinks unless you have the Amiga Ram to create a 400 or so buffers of cache the I am told it is respectable. You can create a couple of Amiga side ram disks for the PC and they are FAST. > 5. Has anyone run Windows on this beast and if so does >it really work? I have run windows on an A2088 but wouldn't bother for most things. If you want to multitask, use the Amiga. Anyway, Good Luck. > I just want to be able to do some programming work at >home if I need to so Windows is crucial, VGA is pretty >much desired and Windows sort of means I need > 640K >anyway I guess. > Thanks in advance for all the help. > > Tim Harris (timha@microsoft) > N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J | Jon Harding, N2KZJ email: harding%b56vxg.dnet@Kodak.COM | | * I don't represent KODAK by word or deed. * | N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J