Hardware assisted PC emulation

[giZmo350]

Hmmm, weird, I was just thinking of this yesterday... Actually I was wondering if there was a way to activate the PC slots without a bridgeboard but, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it wouldn't be real useful without a CPU. Anyways, the reason I was thinking the same thing is that I have an old 16bit (complete and like new) MPEG decompression board that would be cool to utilize. Minimum requirements are fairly modest; 386/win3.1/2MB/DOS5 etc. It came with all the software to playback VCD's @ 24bit/MPEG-1 video and MPEG-1&2 audio using a simple passthru cable.  I'm building up my A2000 to be a King Kong multimedia machine w/toaster functionality (WIP). Anyone brought up adapting a Pi to ZII/III? Good post ElPolloDiabl!

[giZmo350]

So it makes no sense to use more up todate hardware supported by classic Amiga software.  Interesting. But why use an ARM to run Intel/AMD DOS?

Why is a tree good? Why is the sunset good? Why are boobs good? :laugh1:



Anyways, be nice to see a cheap, new hardware solution to bridging DOS to Amiga and use some 16bit boards. I have a ton of DOS software and games that I still use. Is this thread just gonna go nowhere now?

[giZmo350]

Well, for practical purposes, and I'm not sure ElPolloDiabl was actually suggesting anything more than a 486, IMO, a low cost 486 in FPGA w/ZII/ZIII bus, that could take advantage of existing software would be great! Add a $hit load of ram maybe. I'm not an expert on what all something like that would have to emulate though... or how difficult that would be. Do you think it is do-able though?

[giZmo350]

There is a 486 conversion for the 386SX chip that is (was) available; see http://www.ebay.com/itm/SEALED-CPU-Vintage-NOS-Cyrix-386-to-486-Clock-Doubled-Upgrade-Kit-GOLD-CPU-/291449076968?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43dbb7fce8

And a GoldenGate was made too.

This can turn a Commodore 386 Bridgeboard (SX chip) into a 486 to run those DOS based programs really faster than before...

 Yea, I've seen a few bridgeboards around and always tempted to pick one up, to perform the mods, but the cost always goes crazy on ebay and they hardly ever show up anymore. Exactly how does the bridgeboard activate the PC slots anyway?

[giZmo350]

There's this thing also:

http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=351

It would be nice to be able to plug an inexpensive single board computer into the passive backplane on the amiga motherboard.  Then have a "dumb" bridge board that gave the single board computer access to amiga memory and devices (and the other way around).

Even if we skipped the custom bridge board thingy and connected the computers externally over some high speed serial ports or ethernet, this might be an interesting upgrade.

brian

I was going to ask if Commodore made something like this yesterday...  (sure Rog...). Looks difficult to obtain and don't see any real use for it to utilize IBM cards. Still, pretty cool item! Wonder if this type of board could be replicated to interface with Arm/FPGA? Still, a low cost bridgeboard with CPU would be great because as the Crosslink board description states; "That is, you can use real ISA cards on the Amiga, providing that there is a driver available and they don't use DMA. Unfortunately the ISA specifications requires a real X86 processor in order to do DMA, which obviously the Amiga does not have." and that kind of defeats what I would like to use it for... i.e., yes Beave, DOS6.22, Win 3.1, DMA for the old games to work. When I upgraded to full PCI and Win98 a lot of my software suddenly got no use due to hardcoded DMA.  Great find blanning! Be nice to keep this thread going! :laugh1:

[giZmo350]

Dang you guys, you actually had me feeling all nostalgic last night, and reading this article:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bit_rates#Computer_buses

Warmed my heart to see Zorro III ranked on there, for the era it could really hold it's own against the other buses out there!  

Nice Wiki Mike! BTW, I was going to mention that my Buddha only gets 1.3MB/s transfer rate... :furious:

[giZmo350]

I'm not sure but i think there were less than 20 made, I only had the Crosslink in the photos because I worked with a chap who new the guy who made them. Apparently they were mainly made so he could run a BBS with several phone lines. Was able to have lots of Rs232 cards in the ISA slots, I ran a 33k modem in the slots on my 4000. I could not get any Ethernet cards to work though.

 Ahhhh, that makes sense...

[giZmo350]

Man, your sig line for your A2000 is getting long, Rog!    Don't worry, I got a little something-something coming to me from Finland for mine that I've spent two years trying to track down, it's anybody's guess if it'll work when it gets here though, but should help boost my spec a bit.  You still don't have a graphics card, though, and my 600x 8GB PFS-formatted CF card beats that speed, but not by a whole lot, I'm limited by the (relatively) slow interface on my GVP.  

LOL... long sig, short on functionality at the moment. :lol:

What's new in your bag of tricks Mike? Do Tell!!! :laugh1:

I need to revise my stat for the Buddha, it's 1.8MB/s... still :furious:
I need to start a Buddha thread... find out what's up with this... :confused:
@Brian, did you get your Buddha and TruIDE installed? What's your transfer rate?

Graphics card.... Hmmm... I was also wondering, if the Toaster board goes in the video slot, how does one use a Toaster board, a video card and and accelerator all at the same time in an A2000? 16 colors with WB3.9 $ucks... :lol:

BTW, does this work? Anyone here tried it?
http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?p=508355

, just noticed - does your Toaster & Toaster-Flyer work under 3.9 or are you dual-booting?  I thought I remember reading in a couple places the Toaster software only worked up to Workbench 3.5?

You are correct, Toaster no worky with WB3.9. That's why I got the TruIDE as it can dual boot and I'll be running WB2.1 on the second CF card. I'm still working things out with the 2GB CF test card at the moment. Still wondering what to do about the 2 dead 4GB CF cards I got from... cough... cough... you know who that were supplied with the TruIDE. Anyways getting off topic... (I should start a new A2000 thread - so many Q's) hope we can continue bridgeboard alternatives here. Why? I don't know... it's fun.

[giZmo350]

Switch to the Rebel palette!  It's beautiful under 3.9, especially if your use Super Plus 800x600 on the Indivision.

http://www.mfilos.com/2012/01/guide-making-workbench-prettier-using.html

Guess you'll have to research using a video card at the same time as a Toaster.  Since the Toaster only clicks on when you load it's specific software though it might be possible, right?  Worst case scenerio you dual-boot a 3.9 system with Picasso96 or CGX for your day-to-day, and a stock 3.1 or 2.x for when you want to use the Toaster.  Hummm....

Yup, got the IndiECS flashed and am using 800x600 Super Plus. Thanks for the link... I'm only concentrating on the OS3.9 side for now since I know that all the Toaster stuff works with WB2.1 as I tested it all about - THREE FRICKEN YEARS AGO! - I know... pathetic! :hammer: Got sidetracked with A1200's! Anyhoo, I don't even know IF peeps used graphics cards with the Toaster. Guess it doesn't matter much though as I'll still be using WB2.1 with the dual boot. So, back to the "day to day" (as you put it) WB3.9 side, I guess at this point, excluding some technical stuff, just wanna get it to be a great multimedia machine with way more colors without adding a dedicated graphics card as I guess I can't do that with a Toaster... Uggggh! I wish there was a user's group here! :lol:  Hey Mikey, you wouldn't be getting a holographic teleporter card from Denmark would you? :roflmao:

[giZmo350]

What's the Amiga30 thing? I think I missed that... :confused:

Denmark now... I meant Finland... You gonna keeps us in the dark till it arrives? Just as well, I love surprises! :lol: