cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (06/12/87)
I said "I won't believe it until I see it." Well I saw it, so I
believe it. Yes folks at the local Amiga Dealer was an FCC approved
available for sale in the US of A, one Amiga SideCar. The dealer
was selling it for $800. I don't know if that is list or not.
The big news is that the box was 'redesigned' to improve it's behaviour
on the expansion bus. At the dealer it was connected to a MicroBotics
StarBoard II which was passing the bus from the Amiga. All three units
were working as advertised. So what does this mean? Well it means that
the Amiga now has a hardware coprocessor for running MS-DOS programs.
It means you can have three IBM PC expansion cards that are accessible
to the Amiga on your 1000, and it means that if you buy a sidecar and
a 5 slot Zorro box you would have the same capabilities as the A2000
in terms of expansion and DOS compatibility. (Note however that you
cannot add the A2000's 80286 card to the SideCar.
I would speculate that if Commodore is really serious about cutting
costs and supporting the A1000, they will redesign the SideCar a third
time as a simple Zorro peripheral with a power supply and some PC slots.
Then they could plug in the Janus card and reduce the cost of making two
PC type add in's for Amigas. When ASDG comes out with the 2000 in 1 box
then you would also have that option. I hope they have a cutout for a
5.25" floppy in the 2000 and 1 box.
--
--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.