Using a PC as an accelerator? Had an idea last night....

[sim085]

Hi,

I came across this post this morning I must say it is a very interesting concept. I believe many people misunderstood BillHarrison however (or maybe I am?)

I think that what BillHarrison said is that you could have your (everyday) PC or laptop (the computer you use in real life). You then connect this to your Amiga CPU socket. Have an emulation software running on the PC which emulates the an accelerator card (or even PPC card). When Amiga sends data from the CPU port (as per usual) the emulation software on the PC would receive this, process it (having access to all the memory on the PC should make this a no business) and return the output.

If that is what BillHarrison said then all there is to be developed is the emulation software and a cable to connect the PC to the Amiga CPU port. Considering that there is plenty of hardware material to connect a PC to an Amiga, and that the emulation software already exists then I cannot understand what the problem is.

With a little bit more of effort then the software could emulate something like a the GVP A530 which had not only the processor but also a hard drive inside it and thus all your software could be installed on the same pc hard drive. This would also make it easier to see how different operating system worked on your Amiga Units, etc, etc (I am running outside the main point).

I know it is not the same as having the original Amiga hardware but I believe this is the best next thing.

Regards,
Sim085

[sim085]

Regarding emulation. UAE already emulates the Amiga chipset correctly. Also there should be no licensing problems since UAE is under GNU General Public License. So can't this (or part of this) be used for such a project?

[sim085]

Although the idea is very nice and interesting it still more hard and expensive to achieve then BillHarrison idea (IMHO).

The idea on the other thread requires hardware to be developed on bought only for the Amiga machine. While the idea on this thread make the Amiga owner able to use the resource of the PC he/she (most probably) already has.

Also this idea is much easier to implement for the non technical people on this forum; it is ibviously easier to build some form of connector between the PC and Amiga then building a whole card - since obviously if a card is ever developed for the Amiga it will only be for a small range of Amiga's (such as the A1200) and not mass produced for reasons discussed on other posts.

[sim085]

How much is it possible that something like this is developed for the A500? Maybe even through some 'do it yourself' project like the GB1000 project!