Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!oberon!pollux.usc.edu!papa
From: papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: IEE-488 hardware (was Re: Studebakers)
Message-ID: <9895@oberon.USC.EDU>
Date: 17 Jun 88 04:35:43 GMT
References: <4400@gryphon.CTS.COM> <56089@sun.uucp> <1326@sbcs.sunysb.edu> <56647@sun.uucp> <5559@utah-cs.UUCP> <56818@sun.uucp> <2434@amiga.UUCP>
Sender: news@oberon.USC.EDU
Reply-To: papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa)
Organization: Felsina Software, Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 29

In article <2434@amiga.UUCP| jimm@cloyd.UUCP (Jim Mackraz) writes:
|Something I wonder is how many IBM bus peripherals have 8086 code
|in ROMs and won't work without it.  I think in these cases, the
|manufacturer would have to be involved to provide (new code for)
|a register interface and not just a "bios extension."
|
|The question I have is: "What IBM peripherals would be usable
|in the 'dumb bus' without participation by their manufacturers."
|
|Memory, maybe an EGA card (although the BIOS hides a lot of vudu, I think).
|What about hard disks?  What about Targa boards?  How about those DSP boards?
|gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme.

The EGA, ATT Targa and 99% of the third party graphics boards heve BIOS ROMS
in them that must be executed at boot up (mostly for initialization and 
overrride of standard mono and CGA modes). All hard disk controllers have BIOS
ROMs in them (for autoboot).  The few peripherals that do NOT have BIOS ROMS
are things like memory boards, and parallel and serial ports.

I believe that some of the boards that do HAVE BIOS ROMs in them could still
be used if this "dumb-bridge-board" was not completely dumb, but was instead 
able to find and initialize peripherals as a real PC-BIOS-board would.
I have no idea how difficult this would be.  Any ideas?

-- Marco Papa 'Doc
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