king@dciem.UUCP (Stephen King) (11/10/86)
(0V0) Yessiree, Bob. We have the sidecar in Canada. I saw one at Comspec's Amiga birthday event last Saturday. It was running Microsoft's flight simulator on the Amiga monitor. They say that it will retail (here) for about $1k CDN. Somebody blew it up before I had a good chance to check it out, however. Apparently, there is some power connection that requires the sidecar to be powered down BEFORE the Amiga. Some bystander noticed that the system had crashed (for some unknown reason) and he turned off the Amiga power switch (!). The sidecar died, but the Amiga was OK after the sidecar was detached. I was told that it was advisable to tape over the Amiga power switch when using the sidecar, and use the sidecar power switch to control both units. I don't know when we'll see significant quantities of the sidecar, but I assume they will be arriving at the stores within a few weeks. Anyway, the thing has three IBM expansion slots; no Zorro slots. A 'hard card' could be installed and partitioned so that some percentage is available to each processor. (read 20MByte = 19MByte->Amiga + 1MByte->PC) 8*). ...sjk. (insert standard disclaimer)
grr@cbmvax.commodore.COM (George Robbins) (11/11/86)
In article <2004@dciem.UUCP> king@dciem.UUCP (Stephen King) writes: > >Yessiree, Bob. We have the sidecar in Canada... >... Anyway, the thing has three IBM expansion slots; no >Zorro slots. A 'hard card' could be installed and partitioned >so that some percentage is available to each processor. >(read 20MByte = 19MByte->Amiga + 1MByte->PC) 8*). > > ...sjk. It's not obvious, but there is a 86-pin header connector on the interface board for an Amiga-side memory expansion board. The signals are pretty much the same as the 86-pin expansion connector on the A1000. -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|caip}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: cbmvax!grr@seismo.css.GOV Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)
vanam@pttesac.UUCP (Marnix van Ammers) (11/11/86)
In article <2004@dciem.UUCP> king@dciem.UUCP (Stephen King) writes: >(0V0) > >Yessiree, Bob. We have the sidecar in Canada. I saw one at >Comspec's Amiga birthday event last Saturday. It was running >Microsoft's flight simulator on the Amiga monitor. They say >that it will retail (here) for about $1k CDN. Somebody blew >it up before I had a good chance to check it out, however. >Apparently, there is some power connection that requires >the sidecar to be powered down BEFORE the Amiga. Some bystander [stuff] >I was told that it was advisable to tape over the Amiga power >switch when using the sidecar, and use the sidecar power switch Are you serious? This sounds incredible. One f...ing year and the price is that high, and the thing blows up when someone powers off the Amiga? What about power failures? How about someone kicking Amiga's power cord out of the wall? It was advised to TAPE Amiga's POWER SWITCH? Say, you have any connection with Atari? Grrrrrrrr. -- Marnix A. van\ Ammers Work: (415) 545-8334 Home: (707) 644-9781 CEO: MAVANAMMERS:UNIX {ihnp4|ptsfa}!pttesac!vanam CIS: 70027,70
hamilton@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu.UUCP (01/02/87)
cmcmanis@sun says: > For what it is worth, once again "No, you cannot boot the workbench from > any device other than DF0:." > To understand why this is so consider that you are not really booting > at all. After putting in the kickstart (which won't be necessary when > you put ROM's in your machine) AmigaDOS, is *already* loaded. All the > startup code apparently does is create a new task, LoadSeg the CLI > from DF0:, open the console device, open the file s/Startup-Sequence > connect Startup-Sequence to Input() and the console window to Output() > and then start multitasking. The problem is of course that magic called > "install" and KickStart. DF0: is hard coded into kickstart and something > about the information Install copies to the disk is vital too, although > I haven't figured out what it is yet. So no, you can't boot from anyone's > hard disk without getting a hacked kickstart disk. actually, the CLI is also in the kickstart, so it isn't LoadSeg()ed from df0:. (i haven't had a chance to play with my 1.2 yet, so i'm talking about 1.1). the boot code written by "install" is very simple; paraphrasing in C: long boot(a1) struct IOExtTD *a1; /* ->ioreq used to read boot blocks */ { struct Resident *d0, *FindResident(); #ifdef KICKBENCH /* the KickBench boot block transforms * the disk from type "KICK" to type "DOS" */ long *a0; a1->io_Command = CMD_WRITE; a0 = (long *) a1->io_Data; *a0 = 0x444F5300L; /* 'D','O','S','\0' */ DoIO(a1); #endif /*KICKBENCH*/ if ((d0 = FindResident("dos.library")) == NULL) return(-1L); else { struct Resident *a0; a0 = d0; (a0->rt_Init)(); /* <- the real "magic" */ return(0L); } } df0: is hard-coded into AmigaDos in at least a couple places. i haven't made a serious effort to redirect it, and offhand, i suspect it is more difficult than a few simple patches. however, this is a perfect application for a KickBench. wayne hamilton U of Il and US Army Corps of Engineers CERL UUCP: {ihnp4,pur-ee,convex}!uiucdcs!uiucuxc!hamilton ARPA: hamilton%uiucuxc@a.cs.uiuc.edu USMail: Box 476, Urbana, IL 61801 CSNET: hamilton%uiucuxc@uiuc.csnet Phone: (217)333-8703 CIS: [73047,544] PLink: w hamilton
wagner@utcs.UUCP (01/05/87)
In article <172200023@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu> hamilton@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu.UUCP writes: > >cmcmanis@sun says: > >> All the [workbench] >> startup code apparently does is create a new task, LoadSeg the CLI >> from DF0:, open the console device, open the file s/Startup-Sequence >> connect Startup-Sequence to Input() and the console window to Output() >> and then start multitasking. Actually, you know it's got to do more than that. At the very least, it has to read the preferences file in order to get your screen colours and mouse pointer right. A peek at Matt Dillons posting of a while back about which files are touched at startup might yield a better chronology of what is happening there. I have it somewhere if you can't find it. Alternatively, Matt might want to update it for 1.2 (wonder if anything changed much). Michael
iqbal@pnet01.CTS.COM (Iqbal Hans) (05/31/87)
To anyone in Canada who has the Sidecar:
How much did it cost (in dollars)?
I read that it does not work when it is connected to the pass-thru bus
of another expansion product (memory, for example). Is this true?
Could you please e-mail this and any other important information to me?
Thank you very much.
Iqbal Hans
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