Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!cbmvax!grr
From: grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: PC-Incompatible Bridge Card?
Message-ID: <2519@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 16-Oct-87 00:26:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbmvax.2519
Posted: Fri Oct 16 00:26:49 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Oct-87 17:51:59 EDT
References: <4383@zen.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins)
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 30

In article <4383@zen.berkeley.edu> ranjit@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Ranjit Bhatnagar) writes:
> A silly thought struck me last night: is it possible to create
> a "Null Bridge Card" for the 2000 which is NOT PC-compatible,
> but rather contains the minimum amount of electronics necessary
> to give the 2000 access to PC-compatible hardware such as
> (drool, drool) hard-cards?  Or is the PC-compatibility a vital
> part of the link?  I, for one, would pay a bunch for a board which
> does nothing except enable the PC slots.  (If I had a 2000,
> that is.)

YES!!!  Of course it would be possible.  I've tried to get one of the
3-rd party hardware types to do this, but with no luck so far.  Like,
PC compatibility is nice, but being able to access arbitrary I/O cards
without the intercession of one of those silly Intel processors would
be sooo nice.  The real win for the person that develops this is that
they can do the hardware and a couple basic drivers for serial/printer/
disk as the base unit, then sell drivers for other popular I/O cards
as separatly priced options.

Of course you could also accomplish much the same thing by replacing
the extraneous MSDOS operating system on the bridge card with a simple
I/O executive and perhaps using the supplied Janus library on the
Amiga side.  Still, the combined hardware/software product would most
likey be a more profitable venture than an easily pirated software
only product.

-- 
George Robbins - now working for,	uucp: {ihnp4|rutgers|allegra}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing	arpa: out to lunch...
Commodore, Engineering Department	fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)