🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8197@pucc.Princeton.EDU>, FTWILSON@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Frederick Todd Wilson) writes:
> >Now that we have these Duper Disks that will read anything in the whole
> >wide PC/mac world, does anybody know of a plan to put a PC in a NUBUS
> >slot so you can maybe click on a PC icon and toggle control to the PC
> >card thus giving you access to the Hellish world of PC-dom?
> 
> Maybe I'm missing just what you're after, but it sounds like you're after
> a product that's been out for about two years now, AST's Mac 286 card.
> (This stuff was just recently bought by some company from AST, I don't
> remember who, though...) The card is essentially a 286 on a NuBus card.

And it works very nicely.  I have used these cards extensively over the past
couple of years.  Originally, they were a real pain in the rear since the
screen update was so slow.  But now with version two of the software, the
screen updates are very good.  If I remember right, the Mac286 runs at 12MHz
and has 1MB of memory on board; it doesn't use the Macs memory for anything
except the video drivers and I/O drivers.  Speaking of video, the Mac286
software supports monochrome, Hercules, and CGA graphics.  You can set up
a hard drive on your Mac's hard drive, or you can use any network drive.  A
virtual drive is also available to treat a Macintosh folder as an MS-DOS drive
making file transfers painless.  And of course, external 5.25" drives are
supported.

The last time I saw a price for the Mac286 board, it was somewhere around
$1000.  The Mac86 board is available for the SE for about $550.  The only
problems I know of with this the packaging that it comes in: there is no
static protection.  We have found that on the average, one out of every
three sets of boards that we receive is bad.  We send them back to the company
and receive replacements in a couple of weeks, though.  Maybe that will
change with a new company.  I knew that AST was trying to sell off its
Macintosh products, but I hadn't heard who bought them.  If anyone knows
this, let me know.
  
> I'm not sure just how advanced the card got, but software from Insignia
> called SoftPC allows you to run almost ANY PC software on the Mac, even in
> a MultiFinder window. The latest version of this can read directly from the
> SuperDrive.

Someone mentioned that the educational price for this package was somewhere
around $160.  Where can I find out more about this?  I haven't ever seen
any mention about an education program (but then again, I haven't been
really looking for that long).

> F. Todd Wilson
> Apple Student Consultant, Princeton University

-Michael


-- 
Michael Niehaus        UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!mithomas
Apple Student Rep      ARPA:  mithomas@bsu-cs.bsu.edu
Ball State University  AppleLink: ST0374 (from UUCP: st0374@applelink.apple.com)