Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wuarchive!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!uh2 From: UH2@psuvm.psu.edu (Lee Sailer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Question about IBM and Multitasking: What is Micro channel? Message-ID: <90246.143530UH2@psuvm.psu.edu> Date: 3 Sep 90 18:35:30 GMT References: <1132@orange9.qtp.ufl.edu> Distribution: na Organization: Penn State University Lines: 17 Micro Channel is a bus structure that allows all the devices in a computer to talk to one another, including disks, memory, serial and parallel ports, and co processors for whatever you add a coprocessor to do. The original IBM pc/xt/at had such busses, too, but they were rarely given particular names. Recently, those oldies got new names such as ISA and EISA. EISA is the extended version of those original busses with some more speed and power added. Zorro II and now III are the Amiga's equivalent standards. MCA is an imporvement over ISA, but is incompatible with EISA and Zorro. MCA and Zorro II have roughly equivalent capabilities. lee PS I guess that offers the question, how hard would a Zorro <--> MCA converter be? Beats me. 8-)