Golden Gate 386
David: Although I have the Golden Gate 486, I'm sure the answers you need
are the same for 386 GG.
"Is it easy to install? (software)"
Yep, it's very easy to install. It has a hard drive installation program
so it's just a matter of clicking on the install icon. The software for
the PC side is relatively easy to set up also and is well explained in the
manual. However, the Golden Gate bridgeboards don't come with MSDOS so you
will need to purchase a copy at your local PC store. I'm running 6.0 with
DoubleSpace compressed partitions and it's been working great.
"Can I use the Amiga hard drive as a DOS drive?"
Yes again. I have 1 40MB partition (C: drive) set up on my 4000's internal
IDE drive and a 100MB partition (D: drive) set up on my external SCSI
drive. The Golden Gate uses these as direct MSDOS partitions bypassing the
Amiga file system for much better performance than with CBM's Janus
software.
"Can I use DF0 or DF1 as a DOS floppy?"
And again the answer is Yes. My 4000's internal HD drive operates as a PC
1.44MB A: drive when I'm using the GG. Whenever I switch back to the Amiga
for certain things, the drive automatically switches with it making it an
Amiga drive again. However, even though you don't have to go through all
the cabling like you do with CBM's 386BB, I did notice that the Golden
Gate drive setup is slower. Possibly due to using emulation instead of a
direct hardware setup. So you sacrifice some floppy speed for the ease of
installation. Not a big deal since the only thing I use the PC floppy for
is to install software to the hard drive anyway.
// John – (Flying via AutoPilot)
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