WTB: 486 Bridgeboard

[motorollin]

I'm thinking of getting a 486 Bridgeboard for my A4000, just for the Geek factor :-) Plus it would be fun for playing old DOS games on. Does anyone have one for sale? I'm in England but happy to pay international shipping if the card is the right price.

--
moto

[keropi]

lol
u liked my a4000 pic eh???

[InTheSand]

I want one too! :-)

Though I do have a KCS Powerboard inside one of my A500s that I haven't yet tried out! But that's only 8086!

 - Ali

[Xanxi]

I have been beaten yesterday in an ebay auction for one of those. I still want to buy one too for a fair price, even a 386 :-)

[justthatgood]

Yummy. Being able to run uber x86 assembly demo's on your Amiga.

[therail]

yeah got beat too. i mean come on, £150 for a bloody 486 card.... bloody ridiculous!!!!! i am currently looking into single board computers.

[Kronos]

Xanxi wrote:
I have been beaten yesterday in an ebay auction for one of those. I still want to buy one too for a fair price, even a 386 :-)

In reality they are all 386SX (or lower), the 486 just comes from IBM cunnigly mislabelling their turbo-386SX as 486SLC  :roll:

[Jeff]

I was watching that one too. I'm surprised at how much these are going for these days.

The A2386 that I have suffered battery damage as I suspect a lot of them did. I may have to look in to reviving it instead of replacing it:-)

[spirantho]

Just a bit off-topic:

The 486SLC is indeed a 486 class chip but with the 16-bit bus of the 386. Hence it's not all that much faster!

And the KCS PowerPC board is an NEC V30- not an 8086 at all. It's not compatible with the 286, but it's clocked at 10.7MHz (a lot more than an 8086) and actually has a full
Z80 emulation mode in it, so you can run CP/M on it faster than any other CPU of its time AFAIK.

[keropi]

I will clarify some things.  :-D

1. Single Board Computers DO NOT bind with the amiga. with a goldengate u use the amiga keyboard/mouse/HD/serial/parallel/floppy drive/ram etc... so if u just stick there a SBC u will neet it to have it's own HD/CD/keyboard/mouse

2. the 486slc/25mhz perfoms a little more than a 386DX/40mhz. it is a drop-in replacement for 386 chips, and it has some internal optimizing. the ideal would be a goldengate 486slc/50mhz  :-D  :-D

3. even with the gg486slc u will need to find a good sound card and vga. all soundcards work, but some are buggy with the GG486. I have found that NON-PNP ESS1868 based ones work perfect, and I have tried lots of cards.

[spirantho]

I can also say that the Soundblaster II works, and because it's 8-bit it fits nicely in an A1500/A2000.
I'm also using a 3Com Etherlink II I think it is (8-bit) and a CL-based SVGA card.

All plays Wolfenstein fine.

Incidentally a good EMS manager such as QEMM 7 will speed some things up noticeably!

[hardlink]

keropi wrote:
I will clarify some things.  :-D

Very good info.

BTW, "Bridgeboard" is a copyrighted name of CBM/Amiga for their line of ibm pc emulator boards - they even have a graphic of a suspension bridge on the board. They last one made was not a 486/anything, but a 386. However, there are/were clip-on accelerators available that brought it up to the 486slc described in the previous post. (I have one:)

And yes, they included a library that allowed Amiga resources to be used and data to be passed between the systems. There is even sw on Aminet to use an ISA Ethernet card from the Amiga side!

[bloodline]

motorollin wrote:
I'm thinking of getting a 486 Bridgeboard for my A4000, just for the Geek factor :-)

Admit it, come on... you just want to run AROS on your A4K ;-) :lol:

[Amiduffer]

InTheSand wrote:
I want one too! :-)

Though I do have a KCS Powerboard inside one of my A500s that I haven't yet tried out! But that's only 8086!

 - Ali

That brought this old story to mind.  :idea: :-D

NASA needs 8086 chips
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
posted 8:20am EST Tue May 14 2002 - submitted by Matthew
NEWS
In 1981 NASA sent up the first space shuttle, which used Intel 8086 processors for a host of diagnostic equipment. More than 20 years on these chips are still being used to make sure the shuttle's twin booster rockets are safe for blast-off, and NASA is finding it increasingly hard to replace any faulty chips.

In the future the space agency plans to create a new US$20 million dollar automated checking system, but in the meantime it has to rely on the old equipment--if something breaks it has to be replaced. Up until recently replacement chips have been found in old medical equipment that NASA buys in bulk, but even these reserves are running low now, and the Internet seems to be NASA's last resort.

It is not just the 8086 chips that are required; old circuit boards, 8-inch floppy drives, and a plethora of obsolescent parts are putting a strain on scheduled testing. Auction sites such as eBay and Yahoo! sell just about everything and have been used by NASA for some of the more hard-to-find items. This search can only get harder however, especially with the current space shuttles scheduled to be in service until at least 2010 (and maybe even 2020).

Read more at The New York Times.

Plus, googling around to see what games are out there for the old processors, was this amusing discussion in the Halflife2 forum.  :lol:

Can my ancient comp run this game? Mcky_boyz  Mar 19, 2007 10:35 pm PT
Intel 8086
64KB RAM
3 1/2 Floppy disk drive
Some crappy S3 video adapter
DOS 1.0

Can it run at like 30 FPS iN 640X480, low settings?

--------------------------------------------------------

ThePeepsPerson  Mar 20, 2007 2:12 pm PT
it'll run, its just going to take you a couple decades to install it.

 
 :lol:  :lol:  :roll:  :crazy:

[CannonFodder]

bloodline wrote:

motorollin wrote:
I'm thinking of getting a 486 Bridgeboard for my A4000, just for the Geek factor :-)

Admit it, come on... you just want to run AROS on your A4K ;-) :lol:

How cool would that be! :-D