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How many non-PC systems had PC compatibility boards?

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Raven

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I know Mac had them, but until today that's the only one I knew about. I just found out that there's also one for Acorn.

So that makes:

- Mac
- Acorn
- ???

Anybody know more? It'd be cool if there was one for Commodore 64 or 128..
 
The Tiki-100 revision D had 8088-based PC-compability too, in addition to (parts of the) traditional Tiki-100 Z80 architecture. However, it wasn't too well implemented and there were certain limitations on the compability with the Z80-only rev C models.

There were also a 8088 CPU expansion card available for the rev C, but it was not PC-compatible.
 
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RM Nimbus PC186 PCs had a driver to provide some PC compatibility, although they weren't that much different in the first place to be fair.
 
There were 2 compatibility boards made for the Heath/Zenith Z-110 and Z-120 computers

1) Easy PC from UCI Corporation - hardware approach that consisted of 3 add-on boards.

2)Gemini IBM PC emulator - software emulator that utilized 1 add-on board.
 
I have PC compat. boards for:

Macintosh - Various
Amiga - Commodore: A2386SX
Atari 1040ST - Sack ATspeed (mine is not the ver. for the Mega being reviewed though)
Sun - SunPCi (K6-2 400Mhz), SunPCi II (Celeron 600Mhz) & SunPCi III (Athlon 1.4Ghz) (installed in a Sun Ultra 60 2x 450)

There is a DOS board for the UNIXpc that I've been looking for for a long time. I missed one on eBay 2 years ago, that sold for only ~$16 IIRC. I seem to have inadvertently started a collection of PC compatibility boards. That's fine with me :D

The ATspeed for the Atari is nifty because the PALs on the PCB actually emulate the Tandy 1000 graphics, which I thought was pretty nice. The docs didn't mention Tandy sound though.

The ATspeed was a free bonus I discovered in an ST I bought a while back. Took me a bit of time to find the docs & software, but they are happily archived now. The ST it was in doesn't want to boot now though, and the ATspeed needs some soldering & modification to the host ST, so I haven't decided to do the upgrade on any of my other STs.

Still bummed about "my" Xerox 16/8 from a few months ago... it included a DOS board that was an option for the previous Xerox 820 II.

__
Trevor
 
That's a pretty interesting one, Marrr. Any idea if that would work in an Apple IIe or if it's something GS-specific?
 
There also existed an 8088 expansion for the Commodore B256 (CBM 700) that Bill Degnan has mentioned before and even loaded DOS 1.25 onto.

A number of these products may have been more a proof of concept than practically and financially meaningful.

By the way, would you count 8088 and similar systems that natively run something other than IBM PC compatible mode but could be made to emulate, like the RC Nimbus mentioned above or a Wang PC that could be rebooted into PC compatible mode?
 
There was an outfit who advertised in the back pages of RUN or Compute's Gazette for a while with the claim, "Make your C-128 IBM Compatible," but I never saw a review of the product. I doubt it ever materialized. This was in the 1988-89 timeframe, around the time that XT clones started getting super cheap.

There were a number of PC-compatible boards for Amigas. The article linked above covers Commodore's Sidecar, 8088, 286, and 386sx Bridgeboards. Reading it brought back some memories. I had both an 8088 and a 286 Bridgeboard, and the article is right, they were kludgy. My 286 Bridgeboard probably still works, but I haven't used it in years.

There were also at least two 486slc Bridgeboards for the A2000. One company just bought Commodore-produced 386sx boards, upgraded them with a Cyrix 486slc, and resold them. The other was called the Golden Gate, which was available as a 25 MHz 386sx, 25 MHz 486slc2, or 50 MHz 486slc2. There was also the ATOnce, which worked in the A500 and A2000 and contained a 16 MHz 286. It plugged into the CPU socket. The Golden Gate and ATonce were both German products from a company called Vortex.
 
I think there are a surprisingly large amount of them for various systems although rarity may play a factor in how many are still out there. I recall Atari having one as well (can't find a good reference but atleast someone else has heard of similar emulated environments on wikipedia). I remember one vendor making me jealous as they (could have been Amiga) had boards for PC, Atari, and Apple on a card or some sort of variance. Was darn awesome. Wouldn't you consider the CP/M cartridge for c64 to also be a compatibility board? Anders has a great point though, I'm not sure how many are true systems vs ability to read a disk formatted from another computer.
 
Although it was never produced, I was told by one of the designers of the Coleco ADAM that they had planned a PC compatibility option for their system as well.

The Amiga had the aforementioned bridgecards, and there was also a CPU socketed option called ATOnce that sat in between the motherboard and the 68k cpu.
 
barythrin said:
I think there are a surprisingly large amount of them for various systems although rarity may play a factor in how many are still out there. I recall Atari having one as well (can't find a good reference but atleast someone else has heard of similar emulated environments on wikipedia). I remember one vendor making me jealous as they (could have been Amiga) had boards for PC, Atari, and Apple on a card or some sort of variance. Was darn awesome. Wouldn't you consider the CP/M cartridge for c64 to also be a compatibility board? Anders has a great point though, I'm not sure how many are true systems vs ability to read a disk formatted from another computer.
Click to expand...

Yes, I'd consider the CP/M cart for C64 to be a compatibility board, but not for PC compatibility. When I say "PC" I'm referring to x86/x86_64 (not that x86_64 was around then).
 
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