🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <89111609053174@masnet.uucp> jim.shutsa@canremote.uucp (JIM SHUTSA) writes:

       Could someone please explain the difference between the Amiga
   sidecar and the bridgeboard for IBM compatablility.

I had a sidecar for about 6 months.  In that time it spent 4 months in
the shop for repairs.  At no time did it work correctly.  It is 4.77
MHz, and ran most MS-DOS stuff.  It failed on graphics-intensive stuff
such as games about 3o percent of the time.  It was flakey,
occasionally spraying random graphics all over the screen.  I suspect
that the shared memory used to pass the screen info to the amiga was
poorly implemented.  As far as I could tell, there was no way to use
the mouse with the sidecar as input to MS-DOS applications.  The box
is BIG and HEAVY, and is attached to the amiga only by the bus
extension.  I constantly feared that any little twist would destroy
something physically in the Amiga.  The amiga had to be plugged into
the sidecar becouse if you didn't power up the sidecar before the
amiga, or power cycled the amiga while the sidecar was powered, you
could blow some electronics in the Amiga, presumably the bus
extension.  All in all, it was one constant source of worry, with only
minor benefit.  As far as I know, no more are being made, and the ones
that exist only work with an Amiga 1000.

   -does it have colour graphic capability (CGA maybe?)

Yes.  4-color selectable CGA.  Also had Hercules emulation i think.

   -can you use the existing amiga 3.5" drives (using the 5.25" as well)

Yes.  But only an external 3.5 and you must plug it into the sidecar.
To use it as an amiga disk again you must remove it from the sidecar
and put it back on the amiga.

       What is the cost of the sidecar?

Last price I saw was about $700 American.

My opinion:
	NEVER BUY A SIDECAR FOR ANY REASON.
--

Andrew Thomas
andrewt@watsnew.waterloo.edu	Systems Design Eng.	University of Waterloo
"If a million people do a stupid thing, it's still a stupid thing." - Opus