SPRG9165%PACEVM.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Kenneth Appleman) (05/14/89)
Can anyone tell me: - Is the 80286 Bridge Card out yet? If it is: - What is it selling for? - Who is actually selling it? - Are those who are buying it finding it generally acceptable? Thanks in advance. I am on the verge of buying one or another Bridges...
a218@mindlink.UUCP (Charlie Gibbs) (05/15/89)
I have one. My dealer here in Vancouver (Computerman!!) got one in from
Toronto for me a couple of weeks ago. He originally quoted me a list price of
$2495 (Canadian), but this led to many howls of outrage (some from me - see
message <135@mindlink.UUCP>). I think the street price is down to C$2000 or
less now; I managed to work out a package deal with my A2500. Talk to your
dealer.
The A2286 runs well. It handles CPU-bound tasks as fast as any other
8-MHz AT clone. I started out setting up an AmigaDOS file as an autoboot
partition for the A2286. I must compliment Commodore on the job they did
getting this stuff set up. It works well, and the AREAD and AWRITE utilities
let me copy stuff to and from any AmigaDOS files as easily as any COPY command.
But it's slow. It's excruciatingly slow. Remember floppies? Well, not quite
that slow, but getting very close. I got the bridge board so I could move my
serious MS-DOS application development onto my Amiga. (I know, I hate MessyDOS
too, but that's how I got my Amiga.) Not only is the disk interface slow, but
it loses most of your keystrokes if you try typing anything while the disk is
active. I can't really flame Commodore on this one, because it's remarkable
that it works at all, let alone as well as it does. But you really need a hard
card on the MS-DOS side if you want some decent speed. I put one in last week,
and now the A2286 runs every bit as fast as any other 8-MHz AT clone. The
display update is a bit jerky, but you can smooth it out a bit by playing with
its priority in the menu. It's quite good enough for me now.
The A2286 is compatible with just about everything I've tried. In fact,
I'm currently running a STEP board on the IBM bus. STEP stands for Sperry
Terminal Emulation Program, and the board provides a synchronous port which
communicates with our mainframe at work using Sperry's (now Unisys')
multidropped bisync polling protocol, when tweaked by the appropriate software.
The only programs I've been unable to run are copy-protected games. I had the
urge to try Lode Runner one more time, but it won't boot. Same goes for Flight
Simulator, but with the Amiga version handy that's no great loss.
Anyway, if you have the need for speed, and have the bucks, and really
don't want to get one of those I-machines, a bridge board (A2088 or A2286)
could be just what you're looking for.
Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.UUCP
"I'm trying to develop a photographic memory."