Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!cbmvax!daveh From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: AMIGA 2000 and IBM compatability Message-ID: <1617@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP> Date: Wed, 1-Apr-87 18:00:05 EST Article-I.D.: cbmvax.1617 Posted: Wed Apr 1 18:00:05 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 4-Apr-87 11:09:42 EST References: <2845@ecsvax.UUCP> Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 153 in article <2845@ecsvax.UUCP>, urjlew@ecsvax.UUCP (Rostyk Lewyckyj) says: > O.K. folks. This thursday IBM is going to announce its new PCs. All too true. > According to all the rumours they will use a new proprietary > buss, and none of the existing expansion boards will work in > this new machine. Also at the same time or shortly later, IBM > will be announcing a new operating system to go with these new > machines. Of course the BIOS of the new machines will also > be different. Also true. Best guess is that they'll use a new, Microsoft supplied OS that may depend on proprietary op-codes in special IBM versions of the 86, 286, and 386. Old Messy-DOS or PeePee-DOS will run, but the hardware is supposed to be something completely new. > So where does this leave the AMIGA 2000, (and the new MAC ?) > which have been making so much of their their IBM PC capabilities? > I realize that there is still the world of several million > existing (old style) IBM PCs, their clones, the clone makers, > and the add on manufacturers. But the fact remains that as > far as capturing a piece of the IBM market, COMMODORE and > all the rest are about to be finessed. Horse-puckey! You're obviously confused on several points. POINT 1: Pretend for a minute you're a hardware vendor. You're making a new add-on thingy, for the market as it exists today. You could make it for the Amiga Zorro bus (potential market 150K+ users), the Mac II (potential market 0 users), the new IBMs (potential market 0 users), the Commodore 64/128 (potential market 7M+ users), or the PC[lone] market (potential market 10M+ users). Now, personally, I'd like to sell my new hardware thingy. And the best way to sell it is to sell it to the largest available market. That's what PC compatibility on the A2000 gets you, hardware-wise (don't know if the stuff for the Mac is hardware or just software compatible, but the same principals apply). When the new IBM comes out, it'll have the same lack of add-ons that the Amiga, Mac II, etc. all have. Its a new architecture, and no one's going to build for it until there's an installed base. POINT 2: CLONES! IBM's getting killed in the PC market. No surprise. Prior to the IBM PC, IBM had it good in the business world. Business zoids bought their typewriters, terminals, and mainframes (they even put up with EPSIDIC characters). Then IBM introduced the PC, a barely-better-than plain-8-bit box they whipped up in 6 months. Who cares, they were IBM, and business zoids always buy IBM, right? Well, at first they did, and IBM made an impact on the business PC world. Then, along came startups like Compaq who built a better PC for less than IBM. And eventually, the business zoids found out that a Compaq, Tandy, Commodore, or maybe even a Huyndai Clone would do the same job, for much less. So IBM started getting killed as far as sales went, in the very market that they created. Every year Clone makers were getting a bigger piece of the IBM market. So now IBM is going to a new architecture, something that "can't be cloned". Big deal. Its Compaq clones from now on, baby! > The AMIGA 2000 was/is supposed to feed of the availability of > cheap IBM PC expansion hardware. But with the new standards > being set by the new machines, how much longer will the old > expansion addons continue to be available? The hardware's cheap because there are millions of machines that use it. And folks buy those machines 'cause they use the cheap hardware. Its the story whenever you introduce a new machine. The Clones, now and in the future, all work with the currently available hardware. So does my A2000. But the new IBM beasts don't. So what am I gonna buy next time I need a new PC? If IBM delivers something that much better than my A2000, a Mac SE or Mac II, or a power Compaq or Tandy, maybe some will buy it, and pay major $$$ for the add-ons. And there may be a few holdouts that still want IBM only. But in any case, its IBM that's non-standard now, and everyone knows it. > Going of on a tangent from the previous paragraphs, I do not > really understand what if any are the constraints on what > kind of IBM PC expansion boards will work with the AMIGA 2000. > Can anybody from Commodore please post such a list or description. I think they've found one '286 add-on board that doesn't work with the XT Bridge Card. No biggie, a '286 Bridge Card is on the way. The only other problem would be adding a second COM port in the normal manner, as the Bridge Card uses the interrupt Messy-DOS dedicates to the second COM port for its Amiga interfacing. > Does an IBM PC or AT type cpu card have to be installed, in > order for other IBM PC or AT expansion cards to be useable? Some kind of Bridge Card is required to access any IBM bus peripherals. Instead of using an XT or AT Bridge Card, you could conceivable develop a dumb bridge card that essentially maps in the PC bus as an Amiga bus device. I do wonder, however, if there's much desire to do this, 'cause then you'd need all kinds of Amiga side software to drive this GREAT STUFF, instead of relying on already existing PC based software. > Which of the following IBM PC expansion cards and card types > will/will not work on the AMIGA 2000: > Multifunction cards e.g. AST Six Pack, 327x emulation cards e.g. DCA Irma, > IBM EGA graphics card, IBM PGA graphics card, IBM PCnetwork adapter, > IBM Token ring adapter, 3M Ethernet card, Above board or other memory > expansions, 3086 accelerator cards, scsi cards. Most of this stuff should run without trouble on the PC side of things. I know an extensive pile of things has been tested, though I haven't been personally involved in this testing yet. Video cards of any kind will definately work, replacing the Amiga Monochrome/CGA emulation (its a jumper option on the Bridge Card). You could probably even run an Ethernet card if you wanted to, though Amiga bus Ethernet card work so much better. > By work, I mean that their facilities will be available to the AMIGADOS > user in some reasonable fashion. That is if PCDOS is running is an > (intuition?) window, it will be able to use say the IRma card and the E78 > program to emulate a 3278 terminal. Or use the PCnetwork to access files > from a network server. Notice that I am not asking for these services to > be available to an AMIGA program, although of course if thats possible, > I'd like to know about it. You're only going to be running the PC in an Amiga window if you are using the Bridge Card in its normal mode. Adding a graphics card would certainly remove the need to run in an Amiga window, and in most cases limitations on the IBM side prevent the machine from running with multiple graphics cards (they all vie for the same absolute memory locations in the PC's 1 meg address space, or something like that. I'm not all that attune to such primitive behavior (-: ). The Amiga gets access to the PC side though 128K of shared RAM (64K of which is normally video card RAM). When the PC side is coming up, it stops prior to reading PC configuration ROM memory space and notifys the Amiga side that its ready to read said ROM. This gives the Amiga the opportunity to download driver code to the PC side to do virtually anything. The Amiga can even take complete control of the PC side, to use it as an I/O processor or whatever, independent of MS-DOS. The only limitation would be the shared RAM bottleneck, but of course in such a case the PC processor could pre-process stuff to be sent over to the Amiga side. There's a standard Amiga run-time library that manages the Amiga to PC interface. > P.S. I have an Amiga, but I am not a true believer, ready to > defend it, "because it's my computer right or wrong". I can hardly claim to be non-biased, but I do know just about everything there is to know about the A2000 proper, and I have a reasonable working knowledge of the Bridge Cards. > However I am not an Ed Chaban, out to villify the AMIGA, > or to insult you (or myself) by criticising it. > I only want to evaluate the situation accurately without bias. That's obvious, I haven't seen any Amiga bashing, half truths, or praises for non-existant hardware from THE OTHER GUYS in this message at all. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dave Haynie Commodore Technology // /| ___ __ __ __ {ihnp4|caip|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh |\ // /_| | / \ / \ / \ Commodore rarely admits to knowing me, \\// / | +--+ | | | | | | much less sharing my personal opinions. \/ / | |___ \__/ \__/ \__/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~