Amiga Bridgeboards

[Tryphon]

@nexus: you pointed very interesting link with which I just did more investigation on my Win95 installed on the GoldenGate. No luck up to now but I will continue with other idea suggested in this link.
Yes I tried Floppy win95 set and CDROM disk.
@trixter
A pc in a workbench window ... tasty of course but I'm afraid it could be severely limited in color depth. It's easy to buy a used large flat monitor for 10 or 20$ and use it exclusively for the Goldengate.
I opened a specific thread where I will be glad to have your participation (during your time off work!) : http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?...86#post1295486

Thank you

[trixster]

Just a little update from my GoldenGate experiences:

I’ve added a custom A3000 daughterboard which was designed by Matze on A1k forum. This provides an A3000 with 3 ISA slots rather than the standard 2. As a result I’ve been able to install a SoundBlaster AWE64 pnp soundcard card I think this is a good choice for Amigas as it’s half-length and means it does not foul an adjacent in-line Zorro slot.

I’ve tested two other graphics cards - a Diamond Speedstar64 and a TsengLabs ET4000AX. Sadly the Speedstar64 did not work at all. Booting the bridgeboard resulted in a blank screen. The card is know to work fine so I do not know what the issue is here. Changing jumpers around to possibly adjust 0ws and irq does not help.

The ET4000 seemed to work ok - it showed the bios but the machine would hang during the execution of autoexec.bat and config.sys. On maybe two occasions I managed to get DOS loaded and a responsive keyboard, but attempts to load Monley Island resulted in a black screen and Doom crashed on loading with an execution error.

So I’m sticking with my ATI Mach64 which works flawlessly.

I’ve also acquired two Midi modules - an MT32 and an SC55. Both work fantastically with the SB and midi music really adds to the DOS gaming experience

[Glen M]

If I ever get myself an A2000 I think this is one thing I will be looking into in detail as it fascinates me but moreso saves desk space.

Out of interest... Would it be possible to install on of the pentium overdrive chips on the bridge board to squeeze every bit of performance? I think it would be incredibly cool to play the likes of Duke 3D on a bridgeboard on an Amiga.

Apologies if this has already been answered in this thread, I glanced over the current conversion and didn't see it mentioned.

[BrooksterMax]

I do love a bridgeboard, I started with an A2088XT on my A2000 then worked my way up to the A2286 but this is where it stops for me. The higher performing A2386 Commodore board or the GoldenGates are out of my price range. I think many bridgeboards have suffered battery leakage so not as many surviving examples exist.

I find them conceptually interesting. I learned about Single Board Computers (SBC) going in the ISA slots but it does not have that integration with the AmigaOS that the bridgeboards do. I may look at that option for an all in one desk space saver at some point.

[trixster]

@Glen sadly these boards are limited to 386SX class processors with 32bit internal but 16bit external bus, so proper 486 and better cpus are not supported. That said, it’s possible to add hybrid Cyrix/ TI / IBM CX486SLC / TI486SXLC / 486SLC chips which are basically 386 parts with the same 32/16 bus but have the 486 instruction set and 1 / 8 / 16k of L1 cache.

The Cyrix and TI chips are easy to find and can be soldered into place on the GG and A2386SX bridgeboards. Clip-on upgrade boards with these chips require zero soldering but are now very hard to find. Upgrade boards with the best IBM 486SLC2 or 486SLC3 chips are ridiculously rare.

The best performing bridgeboards which are in the realms of possibility of having are eother the GG or A2386SX with the TI chip soldered in place. The GG will do 50+ MHz and the A2386SX will manage 66mhz as it has seperate bus/cpu crystals

[trixster]

SBCs which sit in an ISA slot are intriguing but have zero integration with the Amiga so I find them to be much less interesting than a fully integrated bridgeboard. The GG in a 3000 with 3 ISA daughterboard is the most compact solution there is for the full DOS experience - mine will handle Doom faster than a 386DX 50mhz, about the same speed as a 50mhz 68030 Amiga or a full 486SX 25mhz.

BlindGerman has a 66mhz TI486SXLC2 A2386SX - that’s about as good as it gets without finding a REV TO 486 clip on board with the IBM 486SLC 2 or 3 chip on it, and is probably 486DX 33mhz equivalent.