🚀 go-pugleaf

....etc, etc, etc...

	I don't think that VDISK is specific to Brother Bigblue.  I
have an Epson Equity III in my office.  It came supplied with
MS-DOS version 3.10, which included vdisk.

	The Epson version of Vdisk does indeed include the infamous
/E option which installs into high (that is to say >640K) memory.
Without /E you get the regular memory.

	I also have a very new ATT 6300 with MS-DOS version 3.10.
The ATT refers to a similar Utility as RAMDISK.  They also fail to
mention /E as an acceptible option.

	VDISK will run on just about anything, provided [I presume]
that the /E option is not used.  I have even run VDISK on a
Commodore-Amiga (68,000 chip only!!!!) running 8088 emulation
software.  The results were very well behaved, and worked nicely.

	I don't have AT 16 bit memory cards on any of my machines,
thus I have not been able to try VDISK's /E option.  I suspect that
/E will not work in conjunction with Intel "above board" memory
expanders in regular XT compatible machines.

Now Amiga:

I've been playing around with "Transformer" on the Amiga in my Lab.
Basically, "Transformer" appears to run 8088 as p-code using Amy's
68000.  The disk access and writes to screen seem to run at about
50% the speed of a regular xt, thus I assume that they manage to
steal the usual DOS interrupts and run them in native 68K code.
When "Transformer" boots up, it apparently supplants the normal
Amiga ROM kernel by over-writing it-- they even get rid of the
normal Amiga font and replace it with what seems to be the IBM CGA
font.

In version 1.0 of Transformer, only the IBM Mono mode is supported,
although the setup menu has a slot for setting up CGA color
mapping-- the manual kind of hints around that there may be a
version 2 of transformer as a (I hope free) update that provides
CGA.

Transformer comes with little key stickers that one places on the
Amiga keypad that correspond 1-to-1 with the XT keypad.  All the
regular XT keys are there plus the Amiga inverted T cursor pad so
that numlock needn't be used.

So far, I haven't found any IBM mono programs that Amiga
Transformer can't run.  Here's a list of things I've tried:

IBM DOS ver 2.1  (This is the DOS Commodore Recommends you use.)
Lotus 1-2-3. v1A (I nop'ed out the copy protection in 123.EXE)
Wordstar version 3.3
Zork II & Zork III  (My Zork I is CP/M)
GW-BASIC  (I think it was version 2.05)
VDISK      (from Epson MS-DOS v3.1)
HELP
EDLIN
FORMAT     (also works on 3.5 inch disketts)

The penalty in using Transformer is that the math and computation
only seems to run at 1/6 the rate of an XT.  Really, its amazing
enough that it works!

I bought Transformer for $259 which included a 360K 5.25 inch disk
drive and the program.  It was probably a good deal.  One nice
benefit is that the 5.25 inch dirve can be used to download
programs onto 3.5 inch diskettes, then it is no longer needed.
Amiga was smart, and chose a 3.5 format that's compatible with that
of the IBM PC-Convertible!  (Although you only get a 360K per disk
since IBM DOS 2.1 dosen't have the ability to go higer.  Perhaps
somebody will write an istallable driver that would use a full 720K
on the Amiga drive).

Obviously, I don't get any money from Commodore, etc.  Remember,
the above isn't an endorsement;  Transformer is really too slow to
be a replacement for an XT!

	Bill Mayhew
	Electrical Engineer
	Division of Basic Medical Sciences
	Northeastern Ohio Universities' College of Medicine
	4209 State Route 44
	Rootstown, OH  44272  USA   (216) 325-2511 ext. 323

	....!allegra!neoucom!wtm   (I think this is my path!!)