A2286 Bridgeboard - Weird Issues

hawkman · 01 November 2023, 00:05

I've been exploring the strange, strange world of the A2286 BridgeBoard now that I've got mine working again. What an odd device. Out of the box, it seems completely useless. But with a VGA card, SoundBlaster and XT-IDE, it's not a bad system and seems to beat the host Amiga for sound and video capabilities. I have no idea who would have used this thing back in the day because buying all the gear to make it useful would have cost a fortune.

I have noticed the following weird issues while using it:

1. The Amiga MouseServ will crash randomly when I'm not even using either the Amiga or the PC side, and without any app using the mouse on the PC. Is there any fix for this?

2. ATIME must not be Y2K compliant because it sets the year (in 2023) to 1912. Is anyone aware of a replacement for ATIME? Or is the issue on the Amiga side somehow?

3. Reboots are a crapshoot. Sometimes a ctrl-alt-del reboot will get started on the autoexec.bat and get stuck, sometimes it will make it all the way through. Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga is sometimes better, sometimes not. Same with PCReset. Is there a best practice for how to reboot this thing? It seems like I have to turn off the Amiga and wait 30 seconds to get a clean reboot.

I've updated the A2286 BIOS to the latest that Commodore sold and I'm running the latest version of all the tools. On the PC side, I'm running MS-DOS 6.22. Windows 3.1 technically launches but it's not really of much use. DOS games on the other hand work great! So at least I've got a use for it but these issue make it a bit annoying.

Any advice welcome, although I can't imagine many people are using these things in 2023.

lilwshu · 01 November 2023, 09:42

I had an A2286 Rev 1 (with the Dallas clock vs external battery) and found that the latest BIOS made it unstable with things like reboots and interacting with the Janus software.

I didn’t try ATIME as my A2000 has no battery in it but the date in MS-DOS 6.2 was never correct despite the date in the bridgeboard BIOS being accurate.

hawkman · 01 November 2023, 14:35

Interesting, which version of the BIOS would that be? I think I might still have the original chips because I put EEPROMs in it.

lilwshu · 01 November 2023, 18:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by hawkman

Interesting, which version of the BIOS would that be? I think I might still have the original chips because I put EEPROMs in it.

It came with 3.6 and didn't work properly with 4.2.

hawkman · 01 November 2023, 18:48

Aha. I "upgraded" to 4.2 which was probably a mistake. I'll go dig around for the 3.6 BIOS ROMs and report back.

hawkman · 01 November 2023, 23:07

I found my old ROMs, they are version 3.5 - is that going to be an issue?

01 November 2023, 00:05	#1
hawkman Registered User Join Date: Aug 2021 Location: London, UK Posts: 26	A2286 Bridgeboard - Weird Issues I've been exploring the strange, strange world of the A2286 BridgeBoard now that I've got mine working again. What an odd device. Out of the box, it seems completely useless. But with a VGA card, SoundBlaster and XT-IDE, it's not a bad system and seems to beat the host Amiga for sound and video capabilities. I have no idea who would have used this thing back in the day because buying all the gear to make it useful would have cost a fortune. I have noticed the following weird issues while using it: 1. The Amiga MouseServ will crash randomly when I'm not even using either the Amiga or the PC side, and without any app using the mouse on the PC. Is there any fix for this? 2. ATIME must not be Y2K compliant because it sets the year (in 2023) to 1912. Is anyone aware of a replacement for ATIME? Or is the issue on the Amiga side somehow? 3. Reboots are a crapshoot. Sometimes a ctrl-alt-del reboot will get started on the autoexec.bat and get stuck, sometimes it will make it all the way through. Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga is sometimes better, sometimes not. Same with PCReset. Is there a best practice for how to reboot this thing? It seems like I have to turn off the Amiga and wait 30 seconds to get a clean reboot. I've updated the A2286 BIOS to the latest that Commodore sold and I'm running the latest version of all the tools. On the PC side, I'm running MS-DOS 6.22. Windows 3.1 technically launches but it's not really of much use. DOS games on the other hand work great! So at least I've got a use for it but these issue make it a bit annoying. Any advice welcome, although I can't imagine many people are using these things in 2023.

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01 November 2023, 09:42	#2
lilwshu Registered User Join Date: Mar 2020 Location: UK Posts: 244	I had an A2286 Rev 1 (with the Dallas clock vs external battery) and found that the latest BIOS made it unstable with things like reboots and interacting with the Janus software. I didn’t try ATIME as my A2000 has no battery in it but the date in MS-DOS 6.2 was never correct despite the date in the bridgeboard BIOS being accurate.

01 November 2023, 14:35	#3
hawkman Registered User Join Date: Aug 2021 Location: London, UK Posts: 26	Interesting, which version of the BIOS would that be? I think I might still have the original chips because I put EEPROMs in it.

01 November 2023, 18:48	#5
hawkman Registered User Join Date: Aug 2021 Location: London, UK Posts: 26	Aha. I "upgraded" to 4.2 which was probably a mistake. I'll go dig around for the 3.6 BIOS ROMs and report back.

01 November 2023, 23:07	#6
hawkman Registered User Join Date: Aug 2021 Location: London, UK Posts: 26	I found my old ROMs, they are version 3.5 - is that going to be an issue?

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