[ Let me know if my little posts annoy anyone ]

I was checking over an A2000 that I was using as a pedestal for
an Amiga 4000d and discovered via SysInfo that the machine had
a card inside called the A2386SX... The 386SX rang alarm bells
in my head and so I decided to open up the computer.

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_may18/scuzzblogdmay18_1501.htm

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_may18/scuzzblogdmay18_1502.htm

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_may18/scuzzblogdmay18_1503.htm

scuzz
http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog.htm

@scuzz

Quote:

[ Let me know if my little posts annoy anyone ]

Amiga with Intel inside? Does that sound annoying enough?

Easily fixed. Puil that demon spawn of card out of your Amiga now! Done? Phew. What a relief.

The i386 marker is interesting. So this Amiga could play Doom. And this Intel is 379 times better than an i7!

@scuzz

I ordered my A2000 with a 8086 card in 1989.
I played a little in dos prompt with it, but I did not find any sane use for it as Amiga side was 100x more capable.

Those cards can also act as bridge to ISA slots.
So, you could use ISA based GFX/audio/HDD cards for Amiga workbench.

But'm pretty sure it's not worth it.

I would frame the card and put it on the wall.
(going to do that for my A2232 and other old zorro2 cards)

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@scuzz
Nowadays that retro on the early DOS PC is a thing, I started playing around with such cards. They're actually great, and they can do so many things that was decades ahead of time. For example, booting from a hard disk image file is common these days with all the virtualization around, but these cards could do that in the late 80s. It will actually boot from a "virtual" hard drive stored on the Amiga filesystem, and share all sorts of other resources with the host-Amiga.

A big problem is though, that the software which comes with them is very old (hasn't been touched since '91, and only received minor 3rd party updates), so for example you can't run them on a Workbench window on a graphic card, only in mono, and it has several issues which never got fixed.

Here's mine (well, it's not mine, borrowed from a friend, have to give it back later) in action, with a new RTG-aware app I started to develop for it.

https://twitter.com/chainq/status/988656610695401472
https://twitter.com/chainq/status/989362055277895680

So if you're consider selling it for a reasonable price, please send me a PM. I'd use it for development.

_________________
MorphOS, classic Amiga, demoscene, and stuff
"When a bridge is not enough, build a Viaduct!"
"Strip the Amiga community of speculation and we can fit every forum on a 720k floppy" (by resle)

@KimmoK
Quote:

I would frame the card and put it on the wall.

Please no. They're great fun for some of us still. Retro fun comes in many colors and flavors.

_________________
MorphOS, classic Amiga, demoscene, and stuff
"When a bridge is not enough, build a Viaduct!"
"Strip the Amiga community of speculation and we can fit every forum on a 720k floppy" (by resle)

@Chain-Q

Do you think it would be possible to upgrade one of these to a 486SLC processor?

BTW - Nice job of the CGA text mode emulation.
But wouldn't it just be easier to give it its own monitor powered by an ISA graphics card?

Then you could implement VGA graphics.

@arthoropod
486SLC - it's certainly possible, in fact this is one of the known upgrades if you can find one of these clip-on 486SLC upgrades (they're extremely rare and expensive these days) or brave enough to solder. I certainly wasn't, even if I actually bought a 486SLC for the one I have here...

VGA upgrade - it's certainly possible to use an external VGA card for it with an additional monitor. But that's not what I wanted. Implementing VGA output in an Amiga window wouldn't be possible with reasonable performance, VGA is too complex, and the bridge architecture is probably too slow for that anyway, if it's possible at all.

_________________
MorphOS, classic Amiga, demoscene, and stuff
"When a bridge is not enough, build a Viaduct!"
"Strip the Amiga community of speculation and we can fit every forum on a 720k floppy" (by resle)

@Chain-Q

Yes hex86 and all that etc...
Wow love that quote by resle on ur SIG. Its so true. ... Love it!
Shouldn't it be 880kb, tho?

_________________
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.

I serve King Jesus.
What/who do you serve?