Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!bsu-cs!mithomas From: mithomas@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Michael Thomas Niehaus) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: MS/DOS Mounter Message-ID: <7105@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> Date: 4 May 89 18:58:57 GMT References: <8182@pucc.Princeton.EDU> <2543@nmtsun.nmt.edu> <8197@pucc.Princeton.EDU> Distribution: usa Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, IN, USA Lines: 53 In article <8197@pucc.Princeton.EDU>, FTWILSON@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Frederick Todd Wilson) writes: > >Now that we have these Duper Disks that will read anything in the whole > >wide PC/mac world, does anybody know of a plan to put a PC in a NUBUS > >slot so you can maybe click on a PC icon and toggle control to the PC > >card thus giving you access to the Hellish world of PC-dom? > > Maybe I'm missing just what you're after, but it sounds like you're after > a product that's been out for about two years now, AST's Mac 286 card. > (This stuff was just recently bought by some company from AST, I don't > remember who, though...) The card is essentially a 286 on a NuBus card. And it works very nicely. I have used these cards extensively over the past couple of years. Originally, they were a real pain in the rear since the screen update was so slow. But now with version two of the software, the screen updates are very good. If I remember right, the Mac286 runs at 12MHz and has 1MB of memory on board; it doesn't use the Macs memory for anything except the video drivers and I/O drivers. Speaking of video, the Mac286 software supports monochrome, Hercules, and CGA graphics. You can set up a hard drive on your Mac's hard drive, or you can use any network drive. A virtual drive is also available to treat a Macintosh folder as an MS-DOS drive making file transfers painless. And of course, external 5.25" drives are supported. The last time I saw a price for the Mac286 board, it was somewhere around $1000. The Mac86 board is available for the SE for about $550. The only problems I know of with this the packaging that it comes in: there is no static protection. We have found that on the average, one out of every three sets of boards that we receive is bad. We send them back to the company and receive replacements in a couple of weeks, though. Maybe that will change with a new company. I knew that AST was trying to sell off its Macintosh products, but I hadn't heard who bought them. If anyone knows this, let me know. > I'm not sure just how advanced the card got, but software from Insignia > called SoftPC allows you to run almost ANY PC software on the Mac, even in > a MultiFinder window. The latest version of this can read directly from the > SuperDrive. Someone mentioned that the educational price for this package was somewhere around $160. Where can I find out more about this? I haven't ever seen any mention about an education program (but then again, I haven't been really looking for that long). > F. Todd Wilson > Apple Student Consultant, Princeton University -Michael -- Michael Niehaus UUCP: !{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!mithomas Apple Student Rep ARPA: mithomas@bsu-cs.bsu.edu Ball State University AppleLink: ST0374 (from UUCP: st0374@applelink.apple.com)