CompuServe Thread

Okay, in order: 1) Commodore has not announced a 386 Bridgeboard product. _One_ foreign developer told me last year that he had seen a 386 Bridgeboard being worked on by Commodore Germany. This has never been confirmed from a second source. The A3000 chassis is little-and-lovely rather than hefty-hefty, and is thus ill-suited to the buy-one-of-everything eight-slot MS-DOS approach to life. It appears straightforward to extend the A3000 chassis to provide additional Janus slots, if you are an electrical engineer. You need to be an electrical engineer or a Canadian in order to use the existing Bridgeboards with the A3000, since their software requires a 5.25" drive for installation, and the 5.25" drive doesn't fit inside the A3000 case. It is said (but not confirmed) that Commodore Canada has Bridgeboards that do not require the 5.25" drive. 2) The Janus libraries allow AmigaDOS and MS-DOS to share a hard drive. Janus utilities are provided to let you copy files from one system to the other. Extensions to the Amiga file system which would allow you to call up MS-DOS files and Amiga files with the same file requester have been mentioned as possible 3rd party products. 3) The Bridgeboard has its own memory, and can use the rest of Amiga memory only by the somewhat fishy means of creating an MS-DOS RAMdisk in Amiga memory and then running an MS-DOS Expanded Memory Emulator which will treat the RAMdisk as MS-DOS Expanded memory. If that's too strange, the AST RamPage board works nicely with the AT Bridge. 4) The Janus libraries bring up MS-DOS in a window on the Workbench screen or on a custom screen, and permit easy cut-and-paste between the two. 5) Most 1.3 software works on AmigaDOS 2.0. Main exceptions _today_ are animation programs (due to a feature Commodore added very late, which will be changed). THol() { cout << "Sir, I exist." ;}

Alex, 1. yes, some folks have reported problems with running a bridgeboard with an A3000. Others have reported no problems. Yes, I believe the PCElevator does work with the BridgeBoard, but I know of no one with an A3000 plus PC accellerator so can't give you a definate answer if that specific combination has been known to work or not. No idea on a 386 BB from Commodore. Rumor has it that they are working on one…but NO official word from Commodore. 2. Yes, both MS-DOS and AmigaDOS can share a hard drive…either way, that is…AmigaDOS can use a hard drive hooked to the MS-DOS side, or MS-DOS can use a hard drive hooked to the Amiga side. AmigaDOS can not be booted from an MS-DOS side HD, since AmigaDOS must be running before you can access the BridgeBoard; however, the BridgeBoard CAN be booted from an AmigaDOS side hard drive. If the Amiga is using an MS-DOS side hard drive…it's a separate partition. If the MS-DOS side is using an Amiga side hard drive, it simply one large file under AmigaDOS…it doesn't have to be a separate partition. Be aware…a shared hard drive is relatively slow when compared to a hard drive directly hooked to the appropriate side. 3. NO, there is no shared user memory. There is 128k of dual ported memory…attached to either side…but that's used for side-side communication and also as the video RAM of the MS-DOS side. It is not what you would call "user" memory…it is not available for any other use. continued…

continuation… 4. AmigaDOS and MS-DOS are totally separate…neither affects the other, so yes…you can run both at once. MS-DOS, when sharing the Amiga's monitor does in fact *display* in a window…it *runs* on the BridgeBoard. You can add a separate display adapter and 2nd monitor if you desire something other than CGA or MDA. 5. Most 1.2/1.3 software works under 2.0. Since 2.0 is not final yet…a specific list (were one available) can not be given of what works and what doesn't. Don