On 12/1/09, Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> wrote: I don't think they had the Bridgecard until the A2000 era (no ISA slots to "bridge, especially not in the Zorro-I era). I did find this review from Creative Computing... http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v11n11/92_More_on_Amiga_software_.php My direct involvement with the Amiga wasn't until a year after launch when it was possible to buy A1000s without a bundled analog RGB monitor, and the price for the base machine fell to $850 (making it finally affordable to me at the time). Perhaps someone here was around from day 1 and can speak from personal experience. -ethan

Cameron Kaiser wrote: Ahh yes, Transformer. I ran that years ago. It was a software-only solution. It wasn't perfect, and yeah, it seemed pretty slow. AMAX-II, which was a Macintosh emulator, was much much better. Keith

On Wed, 2 Dec 2009, Keith Monahan wrote: an elephant flies! and we gripe about speed and payload limits

Keith Monahan wrote: Rings bells here too - ISTR using it a lot to get graphics files from the Amiga onto FAT-formatted disks (I used to to a lot of artwork on the ol' miggy, but the reprographics place where I got them printed could only take stuff on FAT) The text seems familiar, anyway, and whatever I used was certainly a software-only solution... (it sure was slow, but the fastest PC I'd used at that point was a '286, so it didn't seem disproportionally so!) [aside - dug my ol' A500 out of the attic a couple of years ago and was amazed at how spongy and outright horrible that keyboard was to type on! I really don't know how I ever put up with it] cheers Jules

At one place I did some work for (late 1980s) it was the reverse. If you wanted to purchase a spacial-purpose computer system as a data logger, instrument controller, or whatever, that was fine. But if it was an IBM compatable, then it had to come from one of a couple of manufacturers tha the company in question had service contracts with. You proably could have ordered an Amiga, but woe betide you if you'd tried to get the MS-DOS bridgeboard. -tony

I've got one of those somewhere. From what I rememeber it'll boot normal PC MS-DOS, byt video output is done by having the approriate BIOS interrrupt send stuff back to the Beeb over the 1MHz bus. So PC software that does direct writes to video memory doesn't run on it. I think this is the machine that uses a curious feature of the BBC micro that if NMI (?) is asseted after a hard reset, the Beeb executes a routing in the 1MHz us address space. Meaning the Graduate doesn't need any special ROMs in the BBC micro, the boot ROM is built-in and accessed over the 1MHz bus. HP did a 286-based DIO card for the 9000/200 series. I assume it ran MS-DOS, but probaly not a PC-compatible version (this is a DIO card I've never seen and would like...). Wasn't there a thing cammed MacCharlie? A box that sat alongside a classic Mac and connected to the serial port (?). It had a 5.25" drive built in and would run PC software using the Mac keyaord and display. -tony

There was a 386 PC-compatible card for the Symbolics 3640/45/70/75 series Lisp machines (no, really). http://www.asl.dsl.pipex.com/symbolics/photos/3600/386coproc_3789-2.html I'd love to get my hands on one (I guess I'd need an LBUS 'bolix first...), though I'd be willing to bet the software to drive it is nigh unobtanium at this point. I have an Orange386 in my IIfx (along with a Radius Rocket II)... it's like having a PC and an extra Mac, inside a Mac... at the same time. Why? Because I can. - Josh Brian Lanning wrote:

Josh Dersch wrote: Hmm. I can ask. I had heard about that but had forgotten the part about being able to package up a 386 app. Something in my brain is saying there is slightly more to that story. I think I worked with a few people who worked on that, back in the day. The ownership of all of Symbolics software has moved out of probate and is now in the hands of one (thankfully rational) person. He plans to allow it to be licensed for a small fee (naturally I am lobbying for a free hobbiest license, but we'll see). If I can I'll see if there is any 386 board work in there. That would be cool to bring back to life. -brad

On Fri, 4 Dec 2009, Jules Richardson wrote: [snip] Fixed! -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

I remember one that was a re-badged Ampro. But they were extraordinarily careful to NEVER say that it was a PC computer. It was a "special DISK DRIVE for the Mac that let it read PC disks, and even run PC software".