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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Marketplace => Topic started by: giZmo350 on October 28, 2010, 09:47:11 PM
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Anyone selling an A2000 486 bridgeboard?
Or does PC Task do just as well of a job?
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At the speed that would run at, what would you do with it?
I know everyone has posted their opinions that the '486 has an advantage over the Amiga's 680XX processor, but I still can't imagine that running DOS/Windows based software on that at that speed would be preferable to native Amiga apps.
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I have a ton of old DOS games on 3.5" floppy (all like new and boxed) that are still really fun to play (Sierrra-Online, Infocom, etc). I Currently have an old 486 with a really nice VESA graphics card that I use to play the old games. It would be great to consolidate to one machine. I wouldn't be installing Windows (ver 3.11 - Ugh!). It's mostly a matter of desk space and monitor usage. Two machines in one!
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Forget about using PCTask for games. It's okay for some text based DOS stuff, but try something graphical and you'd better have a 060 overclocked to several GHz.
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You have that many exclusive DOS games to make all that hassle and expense worthwhile? 486 & 586 Bridgeboards are extremely rare and not cheap! I just read in an Amiga mag that the 386 Bridgeboard was a major pain to install and configure and that the 286 board was much easier that way. Wonder if anything newer would be that much more difficult.
Those Infocom games... most all of 'em can be had natively in Amiga format. Just curious... what games do you have on DOS you can't get for the Amiga?
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I can sort of see what you're aimming for. I have one old K6-2 system I keep around because I can use it to run an emulator I have the requires Himem support. And, if I wanted to, I could run older software on it.
But considering the price you're likely to pay, a seperate PC would be so much cheaper. Actually, you said you had one, didn't you?
I think I just threw my last vesa video board away. The oldest thing I have is a Voddo3 2000 and that will do VESA modes so why put up with ISA or Vesa?
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You have that many exclusive DOS games to make all that hassle and expense worthwhile? 486 & 586 Bridgeboards are extremely rare and not cheap! I just read in an Amiga mag that the 386 Bridgeboard was a major pain to install and configure and that the 286 board was much easier that way. Wonder if anything newer would be that much more difficult.
Those Infocom games... most all of 'em can be had natively in Amiga format. Just curious... what games do you have on DOS you can't get for the Amiga?
Well, I know they're hard to find + $$$ but thought it wouldn't hurt to throw out trawling line. I actually have a TON of this stuff and thought it would be easier to just crack 'em out of the box rather than hunt them all down for the Amiga. Don't get me wrong I LOVE Amiga ports because of the digital joystick.! I've thought about selling them but it would take forever on ebay unless I could sell them as lot. Just jotting down the titles would take forever. I collected WAY TOO many PC games in my day. Quit a few of them are impossible to get now and have no Amiga ports. I mean, this stuff has filled my basement! Plus, I have all the manuals that you really need to play a lot of the games. For one example, I have Sim City 2000 - OK, that's an easy one to get for Amiga... but I also have Streets of Sim City (that's the add on that allows you to drive around in the cities you created) and a bunch of saved citys. I don't think "Streets" was ported to Amiga. I have almost no arcade style games for the PC - that's where the Amiga really shines. Plus, I paid for all these PC games! Arg!
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A lot of people would say to use UAE instead of tracking down an old Amiga too, but sometimes you just want to do the geeky retro thing.
The bridgeboard is the cool solution if you can find and afford it ;)
Best of luck!
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You could probably find an old 486 for muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch cheaper (as in free). Or use a modern PC with the FreeDOS OS. I've only ever seen 1 or 2 386 bridgeboards for sale and never seen a 486 or Pentium. 286 bridgeboards seem fairly common on ebay, but the performance would probably suck for anything but the simplest games.
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Yea, I have a great DOS machine now but just thought I'd ask.... ;-)
I knew they (386/486) were rare but didn't know they were THAT rare!
Actually I think I've ever seen only one 286 on ebay... mostly 8088 cards.
I thought about getting a KVM to save monitor space but that isn't really ideal either as I need different size monitors for all these machines I have... a Mac Mini, a PC, an A2000, a DOS machine.... etc.
I need to get a table like Cammy has!
Thanks for all the replys... ;-)
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why not mount a pico-itx board inside the A2000 lol =D
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/11/04/via-artigo-pico-itx-builder-kit-a1000/
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586?
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why not mount a pico-itx board inside the A2000 lol =D
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/11/04/via-artigo-pico-itx-builder-kit-a1000/
I know that was satire, but a micro PC might be a good solution for him. With a really small PC, the tiny Mac Mini and a decent KVM switch he'd be down to two sets of accessories and savea little space. Plus the PC could dual boot an older OS (or some free DOS solution) alongdside a more modern OS.
Then, of course you set up the Mac Mini to dual boot OSX and MorphOS. Then you've got five OS' (unless you want to throw Linux on to one of these as well).
Since you can't put a PPC Mac into the Amiga, you're going to have two sets of displays and input devices anyway. This setup would be more flexible and capable.
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I know that was satire, but a micro PC might be a good solution for him. With a really small PC, the tiny Mac Mini and a decent KVM switch he'd be down to two sets of accessories and savea little space. Plus the PC could dual boot an older OS (or some free DOS solution) alongdside a more modern OS.
Then, of course you set up the Mac Mini to dual boot OSX and MorphOS. Then you've got five OS' (unless you want to throw Linux on to one of these as well).
Since you can't put a PPC Mac into the Amiga, you're going to have two sets of displays and input devices anyway. This setup would be more flexible and capable.
I wasn't entirely kidding .. I did specifically find one that would fit in a 5.25 drive bay. =]
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586?
Pentium - whatever it was called :laughing:
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Pentium - whatever it was called :laughing:
A Pentium would be a 686. 586 processors were intermediate processors made by Cyrix, AMD, and other (often they fit in 486 sockets).
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A Pentium would be a 686.
Ummm, no. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_processor
Besides, penta = 5.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penta-
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Save2600, you beat me to it....
Actually the Pentium in theory is the 585, I believe intel did not have the trademark on that so that is why they called in pentium (Penta = 5). The 686 (sixth generation) was the Pentium Pro and its derivatives (Pentium II and Pentium III). At least this is what I rememeber of the top of my head
IIA Pentium would be a 686. 586 processors were intermediate processors made by Cyrix, AMD, and other (often they fit in 486 sockets).
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A Pentium would be a 686. 586 processors were intermediate processors made by Cyrix, AMD, and other (often they fit in 486 sockets).
You mean the Am5x86 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am5x86) and the Cx5x86 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrix_Cx5x86), all aimed at 486 motherboards.
Nexgen also had the Nx586 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nx586), but this had its own socket and was more or less comparable to a Pentium I cpu.
The 586 is indeed the Pentium I (with or without MMX). Pentium Pro is, as mentioned in another post, a 686.
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I knew they (386/486) were rare but didn't know they were THAT rare!
Actually I think I've ever seen only one 286 on ebay... mostly 8088 cards.
I have two 486-ish bridgeboards - they're not that rare really. Well, actually, I have three, but one doesn't work, and that is rare, which is really annoying (it's an A2386SX modified to have a 486SLC33 onboard instead of a 80386SX).
If you're going to use a bridgeboard in an A2000, you may need to look at soldering the 16-bit parts of the ISA slots in. It's easy, but time-consuming (I did it on one of mine). If you don't, you'll be limited to an 8-bit soundcard like a Soundblaster II, and an 8-bit anything-else card (ethernet, IDE etc.).
I have an A2386SX which is upgraded with a 486SLC2-50 (8MB RAM onboard), Trident 256K SVGA card, Soundblaster AWE 64 and a no-name IDE/Floppy card, with a small hard disk attached. That's my Amiga in the living room, it's in a standard A2000 KS1.3 with a GVP SCSI card.
In my other room, I have another A2000, this time with OS3.9, an Apollo 2030@50MHz, 32MB RAM, Picasso II, Ariadne card, Catweasel MkII... and also a GoldenGate 486SLC which is powered by a Cyrix 80486SLC @ 25MHz. This has 8MB onboard at the moment. Graphics card is a 1MB Thunderbolt ISA (Cirrus Logic CL5422 I think), Soundblaster II (8-bit), 3-Com 3c509 (8-bit).
The Goldengate is the better integrated of the two, it uses Amiga floppy drives and Amiga partitions much better. In fact mine uses a 4GB SSD off the Catweasel (which has a Buddha built in). It's also better integrated with serial ports, parallel ports, the mouse, etc., and has a Monitor Master automatic switcher.
The reason I've posted all that stuff, isn't to gloat. :) (well maybe a little ;) ). But if it's of any help I can tell you how certain pieces of software runs on them. The thing to remember is that the 486SLC chips are not true 486-class chips, they're turbo-386s. They have a 16-bit databus, not 32-bit. Also remember the graphics cards are running on an 8MHz (or 10MHz if you want on the GG) ISA bus. Not fast.
As for how rare true 486/586 bridgeboards are - they don't exist. The closest was an SBC released (possibly) by Blittersoft, I think, but they were just SBCs. Much less cool. :)
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I have two 486-ish bridgeboards - they're not that rare really. Well, actually, I have three, but one doesn't work, and that is rare, which is really annoying (it's an A2386SX modified to have a 486SLC33 onboard instead of a 80386SX).
If you're going to use a bridgeboard in an A2000, you may need to look at soldering the 16-bit parts of the ISA slots in. It's easy, but time-consuming (I did it on one of mine). If you don't, you'll be limited to an 8-bit soundcard like a Soundblaster II, and an 8-bit anything-else card (ethernet, IDE etc.).
I have an A2386SX which is upgraded with a 486SLC2-50 (8MB RAM onboard), Trident 256K SVGA card, Soundblaster AWE 64 and a no-name IDE/Floppy card, with a small hard disk attached. That's my Amiga in the living room, it's in a standard A2000 KS1.3 with a GVP SCSI card.
In my other room, I have another A2000, this time with OS3.9, an Apollo 2030@50MHz, 32MB RAM, Picasso II, Ariadne card, Catweasel MkII... and also a GoldenGate 486SLC which is powered by a Cyrix 80486SLC @ 25MHz. This has 8MB onboard at the moment. Graphics card is a 1MB Thunderbolt ISA (Cirrus Logic CL5422 I think), Soundblaster II (8-bit), 3-Com 3c509 (8-bit).
The Goldengate is the better integrated of the two, it uses Amiga floppy drives and Amiga partitions much better. In fact mine uses a 4GB SSD off the Catweasel (which has a Buddha built in). It's also better integrated with serial ports, parallel ports, the mouse, etc., and has a Monitor Master automatic switcher.
The reason I've posted all that stuff, isn't to gloat. :) (well maybe a little ;) ). But if it's of any help I can tell you how certain pieces of software runs on them. The thing to remember is that the 486SLC chips are not true 486-class chips, they're turbo-386s. They have a 16-bit databus, not 32-bit. Also remember the graphics cards are running on an 8MHz (or 10MHz if you want on the GG) ISA bus. Not fast.
As for how rare true 486/586 bridgeboards are - they don't exist. The closest was an SBC released (possibly) by Blittersoft, I think, but they were just SBCs. Much less cool. :)
That's really an interesting post!
I am fond of PC-Task 4.4, which i now use on ly desktop 1200 with 1260@50 MHz. The emulation is quite good, with games like Conquest of the Longbow, Dune, Prince of Persia, Monkey Island, Wolfenstein, running perfect. Of course i am limited to BC bipper as there is no soundblaster emulation. Alone in the Dark though is terrificly slow and unplayable.
I also own all the Commodore bridgeboards, and will be using the 386sx whenever i revamp my A2000.
I would be very interested in seeing some benchmarks from your different setups. Maybe you could download the DOS tool called MIPS and give us a screenshot of the result, to compare with PCTask, so everyone knows what to expect. I will post screenshot of MIPS on my setup this evening. Please tell us also what you get with the games listed above, especially Alone in the Dark.
About the 386sx, i think there are enough 16 bits ISA slots in the A2000 to get a 16 bits VGA and a SB16. Running emulation from a hardfile is not bad with SFS, instead of a dedicated hard-drive.
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Aside from the Amiga/Emu experience -- I had a 386 bridgeboard a long time ago, and it was not so difficult to set up, but I sold it so I could get a 486 which never arrived -- have you tried DOSBox on a PC to run your games in? I do not use PC games from that era, but several of my friends who do swear by it.
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I had the 386 bridgeboard, 486 slc board, and all of this housed in an A3000T. I can tell you getting a throw away Pentium 4 machine or a 5 year old off lease pc is 100 times better than trying to configure this old stuff.
Just install UAE, Amiga KIT and pop in your amiga drive, run dos box, and you're set.
ALthough cool all The Commodore bridgeboards I had never worked 100% the Golden Gate was great but does anyone remember to run win 3.1 on a good day you needed everything as fast as possible... and even then it was slow. I did have one cool GFX card for the pc called the winstorm from sigma designs, Featured a vesa gfx card, sound card, joystick and scsi cdrom controller buitin to one card.
Also if you can find it the old CROSSINGS bridgeboard newsletter was pretty god, spoke to the author of that she was very helpfull with all this stuff.
OR just walk into walmart, get the cheapest PC they have and install everything on that and save yourself countless hours of wasted life configuring old stuff. Your time would be better spent selling it on ebay to folks who will pay $$$ for this arhaic old tech.
To each his own, I used to have this fascination and I eventually outgrew it.
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As for how rare true 486/586 bridgeboards are - they don't exist.
I'm fairly certain Allocvec here had a German made Pentium BB for the Amiga a little while back. I know because I was hoping to snag it up for reasonable so I could play the only Win95 I give a crap about: Jeff Wayne's version of The War of the Worlds - a fun RTS game, especially to big WotW fans. I guess there's a PSX version of it too, but I've never seen it.
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I never outgrew it. :)
Of course you can buy a cheap PC, but where's the fun in that? :) There are loads of reasons for using a real PC over an expensive, slow bridgeboard.... but nothing is quite as funky as having your Amiga switch over to a DOS machine for a bit and then back again whenever you want.
Incidentally, there's two slots in the A2000 motherboard which are 16-bit, that's true... but the bridgeboard uses one of them! Hence only one left, which I very strongly recommend you use for as fast an SVGA card as you can get.
I did actually try Alone in the Dark on my bridgeboards. The vanilla 386SX ran it rather slowly, the GG ran it well and the 386SX after upgrading to 50MHz 486SLC ran it very well, a definite improvement.
It's true, for most people, using a bridgeboard is daft... but for people like myself it's still fun to tinker with, so I do. :) Which, after all, is the reason many of us still use Amigas at all.
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Well, guys, most of you seem to have forgotten that we are here because we ENJOY configuring old stuff.
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I never outgrew it. :)
Of course you can buy a cheap PC, but where's the fun in that? :) There are loads of reasons for using a real PC over an expensive, slow bridgeboard.... but nothing is quite as funky as having your Amiga switch over to a DOS machine for a bit and then back again whenever you want.
Incidentally, there's two slots in the A2000 motherboard which are 16-bit, that's true... but the bridgeboard uses one of them! Hence only one left, which I very strongly recommend you use for as fast an SVGA card as you can get.
I did actually try Alone in the Dark on my bridgeboards. The vanilla 386SX ran it rather slowly, the GG ran it well and the 386SX after upgrading to 50MHz 486SLC ran it very well, a definite improvement.
It's true, for most people, using a bridgeboard is daft... but for people like myself it's still fun to tinker with, so I do. :) Which, after all, is the reason many of us still use Amigas at all.
Can you tell what is needed to upgrade the 386sx? Some kind of old overdrive CPU maybe?
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spirantho> As for how rare true 486/586 bridgeboards are - they don't exist.
Xanxi> I also own all the Commodore bridgeboards, and will be using the 386sx whenever i revamp my A2000. I would be very interested in seeing some benchmarks from your different setups.
Crom00> Also if you can find it the old CROSSINGS bridgeboard newsletter was pretty god, ... To each his own, I used to have this fascination and I eventually outgrew it.
What a great discussion! No, I haven't outgrown the fascination - almost anything, no, anything you really NEED to do with a computer (except bloated network apps) can be done on the Amiga or with FreeDos; no, you really don't need an iPhone, but you may want one. I believe I have a complete Crossings collection stored away, I never thought about that as a possibility for digitization before. 486/586 "Bridgeboards' (tm@CBM)? Nope, ask Scott Drysdale (http://www.linkedin.com/in/rscottdrysdale).
A couple of 'clip ons' for the 386SX exist, though. And yes, I also own multiple copies of all the Commodore bridgeboards and have used them. The ones previous to the 386SX and the latest/last Janus were difficult to set up. I should probably test out all my 386 'clip on' upgrades and sell a spare 386 BB, but not yet :) I even have a, yes, i286 to i486 upgrade to try on a 'Bridgeboard 2000'! (I think 'Bridgeboard 2000' is silkscreened on the circuit board of i286 BB's)
Sure, I could buy a few Steve Jobs iWhatevers and ditch all my other electronix, so please no 'pick up an old IBM clone along the side of the road and use it' comments - I already do that. And I have probably some of the fastest SingleBoardComputers with an ISA bus - dual Pentium IV. Big deal. I like running FreeDOS stuff on Amiga hardware; some people like riding old noisy Harleys - you *NEVER* see someone pulling up beside them at a light and telling them, if they want to ride, they should junk it and get a new Suzuki (at least not in the U.S.; anywhere else, and I'd like to watch :).
There seems to be new hardware coming out, I am all for somebody making a new generation of bridgeboards!
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I had the 386 bridgeboard, 486 slc board, and all of this housed in an A3000T............ALthough cool all The Commodore bridgeboards I had never worked 100% the Golden Gate was great but .......... I did have one cool GFX card for the pc called the winstorm from sigma designs, Featured a vesa gfx card, sound card, joystick and scsi cdrom controller buitin to one card.
To each his own, I used to have this fascination and I eventually outgrew it.
Some of the best times I had using my Amigas were on my A2000 w/030@40MHz Vector accelerator, GoldenGate 386sx Bridgeboard & Emplant running MacOS7.5.5 to run Netscape Navigator. My brothers and sisters were puzzled and amazed that I was running all three OSes at the same time from one computer, though I did not boot into Windows3.11 too often (it was horrible). I still have the WinStorm combined VGA/Sound Card/hard drive controller card and floppies with drivers, but was not successful in getting it set up in my A3000T last time I tried. I might have to put it back into an A2000 instead, like I had it before. Although probably not needed, I added the connectors to my A2000 mobo to make all 4 ISA slots 16bit, instead of 8bit and they seemed to work fine.
I just sold my 486slc GoldenGate Bridgeboard w/doubler chip making it 50MHz, (Edit: hardlink, though not technically a real 486, Vortex did make a GoldenGate 486slc Bridgeboard) but kept my 386sx GoldenGate BB with the same chip, as I was told that after adding the upgrade CPU chip, both bridgeboards would have the same CPU speed and power. I would like to get it all set up again for nostalgic reasons and get my Monitor Master switch to work transparently with the Amiga & Bridgeboard's display outputs.
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@hardlink
well said. :)
@crazy lunatic geeks
http://members.iinet.net.au/~davem2/overclock/a2386.html is an interesting webpage. Not tried any of it myself though! :)
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I still have the WinStorm combined VGA/Sound Card/hard drive controller card and floppies with drivers, ...
(envy=)I have been looking for one of those for about 15 years now.(/envy)
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I ran a 2386 overclocked for many years back in the day. the cpu was heatsinked(and most other warm chips) and overclocked with a different oscillator(i think i pushed my 25mhz board to 33?)and using a diamond speedstar(or was it stealth?) video card allows the isa bus to run near double speed. ram access on the old bridgeboard was not too bad for the time.It actually ran win95 somewhat useable,the 2386 had the capability to use the amiga's floppy and cdrom shared which was handy. there were many 386_>486 upgrades to bring it to a 486/50mhz system.A prog off aminet called amems152(amigaEMS update) would allow you to steal amiga side ram for the bridgeboard.Using SXSERV16 from aminet(must use a gfx card) was much better software than the original Janus.the system actually had better benchmarks that a comparable real 486 the same speed.many years ago there was a company that offered soldering on a new ti486slc50 chip to upgrade the 2386 to a 486sx.
They used to tell me windows 98 would not run on the 2386,but i also managed to get it to run,but it was slow and useless,but DOES work. bbguide.lha and such are good things to read.
Oh yea, PCtask is not that usefull imho and sorry no spare A2386 ;)
Anyone selling an A2000 486 bridgeboard?
Or does PC Task do just as well of a job?
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I'll try and get some bridgeboard MIPS shots later, but in the meantime, this is what my A1 G4@800 can do! All running under OS4.1 (Remember: to run PC-Task you may need to clear your languages in your Locale prefs). The pictures are DOSBox, PC-Task Dynamic and PC-Task Interpretive respectively!
I downloaded MIPS from
http://ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/msdos/sysinfo/mips.zip
More benchmarks please! And before anyone says anything, yes, I know MIPS is a completely meaningless benchmark, especially on emulators, but if we're comparing like machines then it may give us some clue!
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There are no 486 class bridgeboards or even Pentium ones. Period.
The best you can get are 386SX class boards (16 bit bus). Many can be upgraded with a 486SLC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrix_Cx486SLC) but that's far below a 386DX or even a 486. It's got a 486 instruction set (no FPU), a small cache and is faster than the 386SX but that's dog slow anyway.
If you abandon the 'bridge' concept you can use most CPU boards intended for passive backplanes - you'll have a completely separated PC running inside your Amiga and have to provide the communication yourself (NICs, serial/parallel, whatever).
I've run a 100 MHz Pentium board in my 3000 for a while but it failed to make a point with an Athlon Thunderbird sitting right next to it.
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I have a more advanced version of MIPS (1.20) that i believe is the latest.
Here are screenshots from my A1200/AGA/Blizz1260@50MHz with PC-Task 4.4 Dynamic and Interpretative modes.
http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/12597178/1/PC-Task?h=ca7f85
That's strange how my miggy seems to do good on all results but finally get a weak overall score compared to your DosBox/PCTask AOne.
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There are no 486 class bridgeboards or even Pentium ones. Period.
The best you can get are 386SX class boards (16 bit bus). Many can be upgraded with a 486SLC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrix_Cx486SLC) but that's far below a 386DX or even a 486. It's got a 486 instruction set (no FPU), a small cache and is faster than the 386SX but that's dog slow anyway.
If you abandon the 'bridge' concept you can use most CPU boards intended for passive backplanes - you'll have a completely separated PC running inside your Amiga and have to provide the communication yourself (NICs, serial/parallel, whatever).
I've run a 100 MHz Pentium board in my 3000 for a while but it failed to make a point with an Athlon Thunderbird sitting right next to it.
Sure but those "single board computers" are not the same fun in my opinion, and won't make any use of all ISA slots Commodore have brought to us.
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Here's some more benchmarks for anyone interested!
These are:
A4000 (CSPPC) OS 4 dynamic
A4000 OS 4 interpretive
A4000 OS 3.9 dynamic
A4000 OS 3.9 interpretive
GoldenGate 486SLC25 (with FAST mode)
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And just for the heck of it:
A KCS PowerPC board in an A500. :)
The one thing it really proves is that you can't trust benchmarks in an emulator. :) The benchmarks for the hardware should be reliable, though (or at least as reliable as MIPS ever are!)
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Here's some more benchmarks for anyone interested!
These are:
A4000 (CSPPC) OS 4 dynamic
A4000 OS 4 interpretive
A4000 OS 3.9 dynamic
A4000 OS 3.9 interpretive
GoldenGate 486SLC25 (with FAST mode)
I didn't look at the others, but I'm confused by the last. It makes an XT look much better than an AT. I'm no big X86 fan, but there seems to be something wrong with these numbers.
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Yes, this benchmark is puzzling.
Comparing my 1260 results to the GG, i do not understand how i get superior results in all categories but an inferior overall results.
Compaq 386 also stands for the first 386 PC made, which i believe was running a 386 sx 16 MHz.
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I don't think the overall score is an average or anything like that. On an emulator I think the numbers are pretty meaningless really.
As for the XT being faster than the AT, not sure how you get that. Remember the numbers are how much faster than the baseline your machine is, i.e. 22 against the XT means your machine is 22 times faster than an XT.
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Just out of curiosity is there some place where I can find a technical description of how the bridge board interfaces with the Amiga and how the Janus software works?
Regards,
AmigaEd
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Compaq 386 also stands for the first 386 PC made, which i believe was running a 386 sx 16 MHz.
Nope - the DX predates the SX by several years(!) and started out as low as 12 MHz. The first common machines were 16 MHz though IIRC. The SX was added to increase 386 software support by enabling entry level systems.
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Yea, I have a great DOS machine now but just thought I'd ask.... ;-)
I knew they (386/486) were rare but didn't know they were THAT rare!
Actually I think I've ever seen only one 286 on ebay... mostly 8088 cards.
I thought about getting a KVM to save monitor space but that isn't really ideal either as I need different size monitors for all these machines I have... a Mac Mini, a PC, an A2000, a DOS machine.... etc.
I need to get a table like Cammy has!
Thanks for all the replys... ;-)
486 bridgeboard went for about 30 bucks last week on scumbay I think...may have been week before.
They do have a cool factor though yes. R@RE just means it's expensive until the next cash stricken person lists it up on scumbay for 0.99 on a free listing weekend lol
Stuff is only worth what ONE person will pay as a maximum, reality is nobody actually wants most of this stuff and it goes for peanuts when it does appear on scumbay so comes down to how desperate people are. I sold The Pawn on 5 1/4 floppy for a 'RARE' format for 60+ bucks, but without that one guy it would have gone for 15-20 probably.
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Save2600, you beat me to it....
Actually the Pentium in theory is the 585, I believe intel did not have the trademark on that so that is why they called in pentium (Penta = 5). The 686 (sixth generation) was the Pentium Pro and its derivatives (Pentium II and Pentium III). At least this is what I rememeber of the top of my head
II
(http://www.3dnews.ru/_imgdata/img/2008/11/21/intel/nehalem-turbo.jpg)
Family = 6th.
Intel Core™ i7-720QM Processor still uses 80xxx i.e. aka 80601
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486 bridgeboard went for about 30 bucks last week on scumbay I think...may have been week before.
They do have a cool factor though yes. R@RE just means it's expensive until the next cash stricken person lists it up on scumbay for 0.99 on a free listing weekend lol
Stuff is only worth what ONE person will pay as a maximum, reality is nobody actually wants most of this stuff and it goes for peanuts when it does appear on scumbay so comes down to how desperate people are. I sold The Pawn on 5 1/4 floppy for a 'RARE' format for 60+ bucks, but without that one guy it would have gone for 15-20 probably.
Well, you are right about what ONE person is willing to pay. There is a beautiful Commodore A2386SX BridgeBoard on ebay right now. It's located in Budapest, Hungary and is going for some crazy cash. Comes with Janus software. I'm so tempted to get it. The fun factor would be great. Thanks for this great input guys as I have always wanted a bridgeboard in an A2000 since the machine orginally debuted back in the day. I would read the magazine ads and reviews over and over back then. hahaha. Thanks for this great link http://members.iinet.net.au/~davem2/overclock/a2386.html spirantho! I have a lot of old PC expansion cards; SB, IDE, Video, etc... to make the project complete. This would be a fun project! And thanks again on everyone's great input on this subject! I'm still going to keep an eye everyday on ebay though for some possible better prices.
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Just out of curiosity is there some place where I can find a technical description of how the bridge board interfaces with the Amiga and how the Janus software works?
Regards,
AmigaEd
http://www.accuratefiles.com/fileinfo/gs5fd3ac8h82i0
I couldn't find it at a better location, it's one of those mega-download places.
That is the Amiga A500 A2000 Technical Reference Manual_1987.pdf
Section 4 has a lot of information on one version of the Bridgeboard including memory maps and a good description of the Janus library.
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http://www.accuratefiles.com/fileinfo/gs5fd3ac8h82i0
I couldn't find it at a better location, it's one of those mega-download places.
That is the Amiga A500 A2000 Technical Reference Manual_1987.pdf
Section 4 has a lot of information on one version of the Bridgeboard including memory maps and a good description of the Janus library.
Oh hell yeah! Downloaded! Thanks!
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I have tried SoftPC emulator for MacOS under Shapeshifter and have ran MIPS again.
http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/12597178/1/SoftPC?h=77e015
I can't believe an emulator running into another emulator would perform better than a native amiga emulator (PCTask), MIPS is definilty a meaningless program after all.