mplevine@sgi.com (Marshall Levine) (07/22/89)
I remember reading in Amigaworld that the Amiga and Bridgeboard (8088) could communicate. That is, they said that the Amiga could take control of the bridgeboard and use it as a slave processor. Well, I finally have an application for this. I am writing a demo in which the Amiga needs all of its resources to handle some animation stuff, but I also need the compuer to be loading information from a hard drive for the demo. I don't want hard drive reads to steal time from the amiga, so I want to have the Bridgeboard do all of the reading itself and send the information to the amiga, so Amy can concentrate on graphics. I remember that the Bridgeboard has 64k of dual-port RAM. What I would like to do is have the Bridgeboard read 32K at a time (from its own hard drive) and store that info in the dual RAM. While the amiga is working on one 32K block, the Bridgeboard can load the other - sort of like page-flipping. Can the amiga and bridgeboard send signals back and forth (so amy can signal bridge on when to load then next 32K and bridge can signal amy of any errorS)? Where can I get the appropriate documentation, libraries, and header files for C? While I'm at it, I would like to use the Bridgeboard as a full slave processor in some other applications. Can Amy send it instructions or write directly to its memory? Thanks in advance. -- Marshall Levine mplevine@sgi.com mplevine@phoenix.princeton.edu Advanced Systems Design, Silicon Graphics Inc. Department of Computer Science, Princeton University
papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) (07/22/89)
In article <38577@sgi.SGI.COM| mplevine@sgi.com (Marshall Levine) writes: |I remember reading in Amigaworld that the Amiga and Bridgeboard (8088) could |communicate. That is, they said that the Amiga could take control of the |bridgeboard and use it as a slave processor. Well, I finally have an |application for this. [...] | Where |can I get the appropriate documentation, libraries, and header files for C? |While I'm at it, I would like to use the Bridgeboard as a full slave processor |in some other applications. Can Amy send it instructions or write directly |to its memory? Thanks in advance. All the things you mention are possible. Documentation, libraries and header files can be obtained through CATS by becoming a "Janus developer or beta tester". Contact CATS at the usual address. -- Marco Papa 'Doc' -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= uucp:...!pollux!papa BIX:papa ARPAnet:pollux!papa@oberon.usc.edu "There's Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Diga and Caligari!" -- Rick Unland -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=