Hardware assisted PC emulation

[danbeaver]

The PC slots are just a passive backplane in 8-bit (XT-mode) or 16-bit (AT-mode) and they communicate with the PC cards the same as a PC or a SBC (Single Board Computer) at a pretty crappy 4.77 MHz (XT) rate or 6 to 8 MHz (AT).  Since they are passive electrical connections, the bus speed is set by the CPU board.  If you recall, the EISA was an ignored attempt to go 32-bit, and IBM's own microchannel was a failed (proprietary) 32-bit attempt before the AGP and PCI came into play.

[NovaCoder]

Just give me a 400 MIPS FPGA card and then I can use DosBox AGA on my A1200

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[Gulliver]

Just give me a 400 MIPS FPGA card and then I can use DosBox AGA on my A1200

Just avoid AGA and make it RTG only

[gertsy]

Why not just set up a small Intel mb or laptop mb in your 2000 with dedicated ram and hd and video capture. Even power supply. There's enough room.
You can use a separate XGA / HDMI output to a modern monitor.
 Then you can plug your Amiga video out into the video capture card on the PC board and use simple software to display the Amiga screen on the PCs Screen.

You now have modern hardware emulating A2000. Just takes a good deal longer to get the Amiga screen up.

[ElPolloDiabl]

@Gertsy
I want to get the VNC network installed and working. It is slow, but there must be ways to speed it up and also share applications.

[danbeaver]

Why not just set up a small Intel mb or laptop mb in your 2000 with dedicated ram and hd and video capture. Even power supply. There's enough room.
You can use a separate XGA / HDMI output to a modern monitor.
 Then you can plug your Amiga video out into the video capture card on the PC board and use simple software to display the Amiga screen on the PCs Screen.

You now have modern hardware emulating A2000. Just takes a good deal longer to get the Amiga screen up.

A single board computer just plugs into the AT bus backplane and has its own inputs for mouse and keyboards and the outputs, but unlike a true Bridgeboard ir cannot communicate with the Amiga.
http://www.voxtechnologies.com/SBCs/JUKI-745E.htm -- for example

[Motormouth]

The PC slots are just a passive backplane in 8-bit (XT-mode) or 16-bit (AT-mode) and they communicate with the PC cards the same as a PC or a SBC (Single Board Computer) at a pretty crappy 4.77 MHz (XT) rate or 6 to 8 MHz (AT).  Since they are passive electrical connections, the bus speed is set by the CPU board.  If you recall, the EISA was an ignored attempt to go 32-bit, and IBM's own microchannel was a failed (proprietary) 32-bit attempt before the AGP and PCI came into play.

What about VESA Local Bus or more generally called  VL-Bus or VLB.  This was also a 32 bit extension to ISA primarily for Video Boards, but could be used for just about anything

[danbeaver]

D(a)mn, I knew there was one I forgot, and just didn't feel like Googling!

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

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!  

[blanning]

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

[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:

[Jeff]

I have the Golden Gate Bus Plus card just like the Crosslink above. It also allows use of non-dma isa cards like ethernet, ide and serial ports cards, etc. Ethan Dicks at Software Results Enterprises was the last person working on the product when his A4000 died with all of the source code as I recall.

[kzin]

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!

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.

[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...

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

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

A2000HD w/2MB Chip, 128MB Fast, P5:Blizz 2060@50MHz, 4GBHDD, Buddha, TrueIDE, XSurf100, RapidRoad, IndiECS, MiniMegi, CD-RW, Kitchen Sync, SunRize AD516, Toaster 2K, Toaster Flyer, WB3.9

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.  

Hey, 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?