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From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: IEE-488 hardware (was Re: Studebakers)
Message-ID: <57043@sun.uucp>
Date: 17 Jun 88 19:52:40 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> <9895@oberon.USC.EDU>
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Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
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In article <9895@oberon.USC.EDU> papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) writes:
>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.
>-- Marco Papa 'Doc

A quick poll at the local swap meet (over 50 types of boards surveyed :-))
has shown that Disk Interfaces, and Video Interfaces, have code on board
as 'mini' BIOS'. Both types seem to have an init entry point, and then
a couple of custom entry points depending on the device (Read/Write sector
for the Hard disks, Read/Write pixel for the video boards). Now we could
(if we really wanted to) us a special version of the Transformer to 
execute the initialization code of these boards, other stuff we would
have to do on our own. Note that since most (if not all) of these boards
are actually controlled by the PC they are in, all of their I/O ports are
acceptable. One problem I saw was that a couple of Graphics and DSP boards
that had an on board processor wanted to do their own memory accesses. To
memory that was on their board. Not a problem other than you would probably
want to make that memory an "I/O" resource rather than a memory resource to
the Amiga. All of the custom/unusual boards for PC's have no 'bios' equivalent
and thus no ROM's on board. These included the IEEE-488 board I saw, a 
PC-Lab board and a D/A->A/D converter board.

Now don't get me wrong, *all* of them would require some new software on the
Amiga (like drivers) but if Usenet is any measure (and it probably isn't) 
there are a lot of spare "programming" cycles out there and not to many 
spare "hardware" cycles. What I am trying to say is that many people sit
at home and write code, whereas a much smaller number design new boards.
My point being that, to the hardware manufacturer of the board, it's pure
profit because they won't care about the software. They just sell the boards.
So given this 'Bus Adapter' (my new name for it), a IBM PC/AT compatible 
interface card, and a hardware manual for the PC card. One programmer could
have the basis for a 'value added' business. (Buys the card dirt cheap from
the PC card manufacturer (Serial port adapters are $30 these days) adds 
some software to make it work with the Amiga (pcserial.device) and maybe
a whacked version of VT100, and sells it to Amiga owners that want another
serial port for $100. Not great margins but it's definitely a living.

--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.