CompuServe Messages

Barbara: Another thing. Please look at switchboxes and products that add I/O ports to the Amiga. Switchboxes come in parallel, serial and 15-pin (for monitors) flavors. Some boxes work, some don't. Some handle up to four devices but require power and don't seem to like the Amiga. Some are heavily buffered so you can use 'em on the fly, while switching others while the system is alive may cause dangerous surges. Or so I'm told. I just bought a GVP I/O Extender because with a scanner, genlock, digitizer, MIDI box, modem, two printers and what all else, I'm getting tired of pulling plugs. Also, with a bridgeboard and a VGA-equipped stand-alone PC on my desk, plus a flicker fixer in the Amiga, a monitor switchbox is a necessity. Seems to me the Amiga has a real advantage in that adding multiple serial ports isn't limited by the IRQ interrupt problems that plague PCs. E.g., you can pop as many GVP Phonepak cards into an Amiga as you have slots, and they'll all work. Try something similar on any PC! The Amiga ought to be a natural for networking — to other Amigas or alien platforms. It would also make a great interface between duller computers and the real world. Some researchers already use Amigas as front-end terminals for scientific workstations, after all.