ranjit@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Ranjit Bhatnagar) (10/16/87)
A silly thought struck me last night: is it possible to create a "Null Bridge Card" for the 2000 which is NOT PC-compatible, but rather contains the minimum amount of electronics necessary to give the 2000 access to PC-compatible hardware such as (drool, drool) hard-cards? Or is the PC-compatibility a vital part of the link? I, for one, would pay a bunch for a board which does nothing except enable the PC slots. (If I had a 2000, that is.) Ranjit .......(o o)....... ranjit@cory.berkeley.edu ---vvv---U---vvv--- ucbvax!cory!ranjit
grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) (10/16/87)
In article <4383@zen.berkeley.edu> ranjit@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Ranjit Bhatnagar) writes: > A silly thought struck me last night: is it possible to create > a "Null Bridge Card" for the 2000 which is NOT PC-compatible, > but rather contains the minimum amount of electronics necessary > to give the 2000 access to PC-compatible hardware such as > (drool, drool) hard-cards? Or is the PC-compatibility a vital > part of the link? I, for one, would pay a bunch for a board which > does nothing except enable the PC slots. (If I had a 2000, > that is.) YES!!! Of course it would be possible. I've tried to get one of the 3-rd party hardware types to do this, but with no luck so far. Like, PC compatibility is nice, but being able to access arbitrary I/O cards without the intercession of one of those silly Intel processors would be sooo nice. The real win for the person that develops this is that they can do the hardware and a couple basic drivers for serial/printer/ disk as the base unit, then sell drivers for other popular I/O cards as separatly priced options. Of course you could also accomplish much the same thing by replacing the extraneous MSDOS operating system on the bridge card with a simple I/O executive and perhaps using the supplied Janus library on the Amiga side. Still, the combined hardware/software product would most likey be a more profitable venture than an easily pirated software only product. -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {ihnp4|rutgers|allegra}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: out to lunch... Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (10/16/87)
in article <4383@zen.berkeley.edu>, ranjit@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Ranjit Bhatnagar) says: > A silly thought struck me last night: is it possible to create > a "Null Bridge Card" for the 2000 which is NOT PC-compatible, > but rather contains the minimum amount of electronics necessary > to give the 2000 access to PC-compatible hardware such as > (drool, drool) hard-cards? Or is the PC-compatibility a vital > part of the link? I, for one, would pay a bunch for a board which > does nothing except enable the PC slots. (If I had a 2000, that is.) This would actually be possible. You'd need some logic to handle the 8 vs 16 bit busses if you wanted XT compatibility, and you'd need to encode all the IBM interrupts onto maybe one A2000 interrupt. And basically do whatever it is that IBM ATs do to look like PCs for those older cards. They have a 14Mhz clock on the backplane, and some other stuff. The neatest things is that the entire PC I/O address space could show up as 68000 memory on an autoconfig slot. Whether or not you're a fan of the PC (and there are few who like it less than I), you'll certainly have to admit there's lots of nice hardware out there for it. By the way, I know of at least one person working on this card, so maybe it'll materialize some day. > Ranjit -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga Usenet: {ihnp4|caip|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh "The B2000 Guy" PLINK : D-DAVE H BIX : hazy "Computers are what happen when you give up sleeping" - Iggy the Cat
cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (10/16/87)
In article <4383@zen.berkeley.edu> (Ranjit Bhatnagar) writes: >A silly thought struck me last night: is it possible to create >a "Null Bridge Card" for the 2000 which is NOT PC-compatible, >but rather contains the minimum amount of electronics necessary >to give the 2000 access to PC-compatible hardware such as >(drool, drool) hard-cards? Or is the PC-compatibility a vital >part of the link? I, for one, would pay a bunch for a board which >does nothing except enable the PC slots. (If I had a 2000, >that is.) This is not a silly thought, this is an excellent thought. And we (the BIX crowd) discussed it with the Commodore developers quite a bit. Everyone seemed to agree that it was a good thing, but no one wanted to build it or write the code to handle it properly. Since most PC type cards expect to be run in a PC they make certain assumptions about cycle times, and byte ordering and such, plus sometimes the code to run them is actually in ROM on the board itself ! So, why not forget about the bridge card being a PC compatible board and instead treat is as a simple I/O processor frontend for PC cards. Then you can tell your friends your Amiga has intelligent Channel I/O. :-) Seriously though I think that this is the single best use for it (IMHO) since you don't really 'gain' anything by having it be a PC. --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.