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From: daveh@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A2000 questions
Message-ID: <1770@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 27-Apr-87 13:04:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbmvax.1770
Posted: Mon Apr 27 13:04:52 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 28-Apr-87 02:18:20 EDT
References: <192@s.cc.purdue.edu>
Distribution: world
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 65

in article <192@s.cc.purdue.edu>, ain@s.cc.purdue.edu (Patrick White) says:
> 
>    We have elected to call the 8088 (or 8086, or 80286, or ...) an "8088
> machine".  If which processor makes a difference, please specify.
> 
> 1:	   Does the MS-DOS (shipped with the 2088, according to BYTE March
> 	1987, pp 84-98) come on a 3.5" disk or a 5.25"?  I expect it is a 3.5"

The ones we've received so far are 5.25" floppies.  
> 
> 2:	   I know the Amiga can have a partition of the 8088 hard disk, but
> 	can the Amiga access the drives and other devices attached to the
> 	8088 machine?

It can physically, using the Janus.library in a way similar to that of the
"amiga-partition-on-PC-Harddisk" scheme is currently done.  It will require
AmigaDOS drivers, though.  The only drivers I've seen so far for Amiga using
PC facilities is the hard disk driver.  Others could be written, though I
don't think C-A is too interested in writing a driver to implement Amiga
partitions on a PC floppy (does MessyDOS even let you partition floppies?).

> 3:	   Can the 8088 machine use (or gain access to) the Amiga 3.5 inch
> 	floppies, and the Amiga SCSI devices?
> 	   Could the 8088 machine have a partition on the Amiga SCSI hard
> 	drive?

There's currently work being done that will let the PC side use a partition
on an Amiga hard disk.  Certainly drivers of other kinds could be written 
for the PC, and I 'spose if you wanted it, with the proper drivers for the
PC you could put a PC partition on an Amiga floppy.  Just to let the PC use
a 3.5" disk, however, is less involved.  All of the internal drives use the
same 36 pin disk drive cables, and all external drives use the Amiga 23 pin
D style floppy connector, so its easy to physically transport drives from
Amiga to PC and back.

> 4:	   Have provisions been made for transfering between the two formats?

There's some kind of work being done on this.  They've announced a format
exchange of some kind (in addition to the simple cut and paste between
windows) but I'm not sure what form the transfer will take.  Expect either
a dedicated transfer program or perhaps an AmigaDOS device.

> 5:	   What kind of OS support will be provided for sharing data between
> 	the 8088 machine and the Amiga?  Both Amiga OS support as well as
> 	8088 machine support?

The Amiga's support exists in the form of an Exec library called the 
Janus.library, which provides routines for allocating and freeing various
resources on the bridge cards, so that drivers and the other things I've
talked about can be easily written.  Since the PC sides doesn't really have
an operating system, I'm not sure what all is available for communications.
In the case of the Amiga partition on the PC hard disk, a trick hard disk
driver program is loaded by the Amiga into shared RAM that looks to the PC
as if it were ROM.  There are a few hooks in the PC BIOS that let the Amiga
play games with it, but I'm not familiar enough with the PC side of things
to tell exactly what's going on.
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks
> Scott Mark 	Usenet:  h.cc.purdue.edu!npk
> Pat White	Usenet:  k.cc.purdue.edu!ain	BITNET: PATWHITE@PURCCVM
-- 
Dave Haynie     Commodore-Amiga    Usenet: {ihnp4|caip|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh
"The A2000 Guy"                    BIX   : hazy
	"These are the days of miracle and wonder" -P. Simon