Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!uw-june!dylan
From: dylan@cs.washington.edu (Dylan McNamee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Using Bridgecard for I/O processor
Summary: possible? easy? useful?
Message-ID: <10468@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 90 20:28:55 GMT
Reply-To: dylan@cs.washington.edu (Dylan McNamee)
Organization: University of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
Lines: 21


With the educational systems bundling Bridgecards (AT for 2000HD
and 2500/30), it seems that there will be many new uses for these
boards that don't necessarily use their "PC'ness".  

Multiprocessing is one example, but a more immediate need that it 
could fulfill would be to use it as an I/O processor, along with 
one or two of the ridiculously cheap (~$50 for 2 serial, 1 parallel, 
1 game port.) multi-port cards for the PC bus.

My question:  would it be fairly simple to write an pcbus.serial.device
that would send serial port activity to the PC side to be processed?
This would allow 4 serial ports to be connected at low cost, with
the added benefit of not tying the 68000 bus up all the time.

Along a similar vein, what are the multiprocessing support utilities
Commodore mentions that come with the Bridgecards?  Are they easy
to use, fast, flexible, etc.?  (or---vaporware?)

dylan
dylan@cs.washington.edu