Amiga Sidecar

The A1060 Sidecar (of English. " Sidecar " = side car or trailer ) or the XT Bridge Board was an independent PC ( based on the Intel 8088 ), which was connected to the right side of the Amiga 1000. The IO area of 8088 was displayed by means of shared memory into the address space of the Amiga - host system. Between Amiga Sidecar and a data exchange was possible.

Through the sidecar, it was possible to work on a single monitor, a keyboard, a mouse and a printer to two different computers at the same time. For MS -DOS applications were run in a window of the Amiga operating system and were able to share the periphery of the Amiga. The Sidecar was a possibility the Amiga 1000 to provide through installation of a file card with a hard drive that was used for both parts of the outfit for the first time.

The Sidecar was created in the Brunswick Development Department of Commodore because you had there, thanks to the Commodore PC - row experience to the PC architecture.

Due to the high system costs of both the Amiga 1000, which was replaced after a short time by cheaper (Amiga 500) and more extensible ( A2000 ) variants, as well as the sidecars itself, which, strictly speaking, was a Commodore PC 10 without graphics card and keyboard ( it even had its own power supply), the Sidecar was granted a relatively short life.

The successor of the Sidecar presented the various Bridge boards represent, which also constitute a complete PC, but this on a plug-in card in a Zorro slot of A2000, A3000 or A4000. They existed from Commodore 8088 - ( A2088 ), 80286 - ( A2286 ) and 80386SX ( A2386SX ) processor. The XT- Bridge Board is referred to in the ( German ) manual and on the board itself as " PC emulator " in the literature was also spoken by MS- DOS emulator.

Later, there were also other Amiga models, such as the Amiga 500 or Amiga 500 plus, third-party own PC emulator card (eg the KCS Power PC Board). In the period following software emulators have become more popular, such as PCTask or PCx as the increased power of the 68060 - or powerUP -based Amigas sufficient for this purpose.

Specifications

Sidecar

  • Year of publication: 1986
  • RAM: 256 KB, 512 KB later
  • CPU: Intel 8088, 4.77 MHz
  • Original price: 1500 DM
  • Special features: battery-backed real-time clock, complete IBM XT running parallel to the Amiga
  • PC expenses run about the Amiga screen and on the Amiga connected printer.
  • PC Input running on Amiga keyboard and mouse.

A2088 (XT) Bridge Board

  • Sockets for mathem. Coprocessor 8087
  • The 8088 can be replaced by an NEC V20
  • Special features: runs parallel to the Amiga, but must be started from the command binddrivers, using MFM and RLL hard disks with corresponding controller possible on these drives can an Amiga partition ( JH0 :) be set up, but from this the Amiga can not boot.
  • Text and graphic output as a task on the Amiga screen or via a PC graphics card ISA to an external monitor
  • Input about Amiga keyboard and mouse
  • ISA slots on the motherboard of the Amiga 2000: 2 available 8 -bit ISA slots ( can be converted by soldering 16 -bit slots in this one), one of available 16 -bit ISA slot, the second 16 - bit slot occupied the Bridge Board itself
  • Connection for an external Amiga floppy drive on the back, this 880 -KB Amiga drive is then used as a 720- KB - PC drive
  • Internal connection for a 360 KB floppy drive
  • Speaker connector (jumper J2, internal)
  • The parallel port of an Amiga can be used as LPT1.

Supplied present were the following disks:

Software for the Amiga

  • Special Workbench disk for version 1.2
  • PC Install for Workbench 1.3
  • Amiga Workbench 2.1 for Janus

Software for PC

  • MS- DOS 3.2 (two 5-1/4 "floppy ) for XT- Bridge Board
  • MS -DOS 3.3 ( three 5-1/4 "floppy ) for all bridge board versions

These disks contain unlike other MS -DOS versions special software that allow the exchange of data, the use of the Amiga mouse and the interrogation of the Amiga system time.

A2286 (AT) Bridge Board

  • Bridge Board with CPU Intel 80286

A2386X (AT) Bridge Board

  • Bridge Board with CPU Intel 80386 SX

Supported Operating Systems

In addition to MS- DOS, it was possible with the A2386SX to run Windows 3.11. For this, the Bridge Board had to contain sufficient and its own ISA graphics are used, which dominated the VGA display that could not be a Amiga 2000 a lot of RAM.

Electronic visual display MS-DOS Hardcard Commodore International Motorola 68060 Intel 8087 Industry Standard Architecture KIM-1 Commodore CBM-II Commodore 900 Commodore MAX Machine Commodore SX-64 Commodore 16 Commodore Plus4 Amiga 600 Amiga 3000T Amiga 3000UX Amiga 4000 Commodore Datasette Commodore 1540 Commodore 1551 Commodore 1581 Amiga Zorro II Clock port MOS Technology VIC MOS Technology VIC II MOS Technology TED MOS Technology 8563 MOS Technology 6522 MOS Technology CIA MOS Technology 6551 MOS Technology Agnus Original Chip Set#Paula Amiga Halfbrite mode Original Chip Set Amiga Enhanced Chip Set Amiga Advanced Graphics Architecture PETSCII GEOS (8-bit operating system) Commodore DOS Kickstart (Amiga) Workbench (AmigaOS) ARexx AmigaGuide
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