| I SAW MY FIRST "AT ONE" YESTERDAY. They were finishing the installation
just as I walked into the dealers. Steve went thru several menus of
commands to configure the system. After all was set up he rebooted the
system,(AT one)and it came up asking for your dos boot disk in
drive"a". Of course none had an AT boot disk so the story is to be
continued. From what I saw it looks promising. You configure it for
640k,and the rest of the meg on the five hundred can be expanded, or
extended dos memory. This will meet the needes of those that like the
amiga but think they need IBM compatability.
bill
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| History: Commodore released the Transformer to run on the A1000 and
AmigaDOS V1.1 in advance of the promised "SideCar".
CPU: The Transformer does software emulation of basic 8086-based
PC. It provides about half the performance of the PC-XT,
which isn't anything to write home about.
Screen: Although the preferences program allows specification of
color screen support, that feature was never implemented.
Only the basic monochrome interface is emulated.
Keyboard: The IBM standard keyboard is emulated. There are a few
differences between the A500 key front legends and the
Transformer key map, but these are inconsequential.
Disks: DF0 through DF3 may be configured as drives A through D.
No hard disk support is provided.
Printer: The Transformer is unable to use the parallel port on
AmigaDOS V1.3 and later (major enhancements were made in
1.3 that were incompatible with the Transformer's usage).
My solution has been to use a public domain MS-DOS utility
to capture printed output on a diskette file. From the
AmigaDOS side, I then COPY DI0:filename to PAR: using
CrossDOS to provide access to the MS-DOS file.
Async I/O: I haven't attempted to address the (asynchronous) RS232
port. Given the above, I have no expectations.
Operation: After using the ATprefs program to establish configuration
preferences, either double-click the Transformer icon or
boot the A500 from [a copy of] the distribution disk. The
Transformer will display its current configuration and tell
the user to insert the MS-DOS boot disk (in DF0:) and press
RETURN to continue or to press ESCAPE to revert to AmigaDOS.
Once the Tranformer starts to boot MS-DOS, it takes full
control of the A500, which must then be rebooted to return
to AmigaDOS.
Publisher: Commodore-Amiga Inc.
This program is no longer supported or available for sale.
It was once packaged with the Amiga 5�" diskette drive and
downloadable objects of both the original and a patched
version that supports M68010 systems are available on some
bulletin boards.
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| I splurged this weekend and bought the ATonce board to give my A500
PC-AT compatibility (a necessary evil).
Overview: ATonce is a German product, which replaces the 68000 with
a daughterboard containing low-power 68000 and 80286 CPUs,
a Gate Array, and assorted "glue" components. It also has
an AmigaDOS software disk and an MS-DOS utilities disk.
The list price is $400, but ATonce can be had at a discount.
CPU: ATonce includes an 80286 that executes at the A500's 7.2 MHz
clock speed. It claims a rating of 6.1 on the Norton SI
test. (My own observation is that it's a heck of a lot
swifter and more complete than the Transformer software
emulation, but that's not a very scientific measurement. 8^)
Screen: ATonce provides CGA, Olivetti/Toshiba 3100 (V400), and
Hercules (MDA) emulation with up to 4 bit planes (16 colors).
The Amiga custom chips are used to advantage.
Keyboard: The IBM standard keyboard is emulated. The A500 key front
legends seem to apply.
Disks: Drives "A" and "B" may be configured as 40-track (320KB) or
80-track (720KB) diskettes. Drives "C" through "Z" may be
hard disk partitions or designated files in the Amiga file
system. The minimum usable hard disk partition/file is 5MB.
Printer: The parallel port is LPT1.
Async I/O: By default, the Amiga mouse appears as a Microsoft mouse on
COM1 and the Amiga RS232 port appears as COM2.
Memory: A 1MB A500 can emulate a 640KB PC-AT. Any additional fast
memory can be configured as "Extended"/"Expanded" AT memory.
(Aren't you glad the M68000 architecture doesn't force us
into this kind of hackery? The Amiga's CHIP/FAST memory
considerations are straight-forward by comparison. 8^)
Operation: After using the Install program to configure the emulated
AT, double-clicking the ATonce icon (in the same drawer)
causes loading of the software part of the product. Its
memory management immediately reboots the Amiga with the
cold-capture and cool-capture vectors set. ATonce opens
a screen over the workbench, checks its memory for errors,
and requests its MS-DOS boot diskette (unless configured
to boot from hard disk partition "C"). Since the Amiga
workbench is still booting, one should wait until the DF0:
drive light goes out before inserting the MS-DOS diskette.
Comments: ATonce will support both the Fat Agnus (512KB) and the
"Big Fat Agnus" (1MB). ATonce uses LOTS of CHIP RAM as it
attempts CGA emulation. This limits the amount of multi-
tasking that even a memory-rich A500 can do. In any event,
ATonce meets my need for decent PC compatibility without
forcing me to buy a separate machine to get it.
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