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Amiga PC bridge

pontus

pontus

Veteran Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2008
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698
Location
Uppsala, Sweden
I've gotten my hands on an Amiga 2000 and a PC Bridge board. I haven't decided whether to keep it or not. I'm a bit curious about the bridge board, was it possible to run a PC environment (dos or cpm) alongside the Amiga OS? Was it common or have I found something rare?

Also, out of curiosity, is there a reason we don't have an Amiga section in the forums?
 
pontus said:
I've gotten my hands on an Amiga 2000 and a PC Bridge board. I haven't decided whether to keep it or not. I'm a bit curious about the bridge board, was it possible to run a PC environment (dos or cpm) alongside the Amiga OS? Was it common or have I found something rare?
Click to expand...
IIRC you can boot off the bridgeboard into DOS, or even run DOS apps "inside" Amiga OS in a window using special software. Not sure about CPM, but I don't see any reason it wouldn't work. I don't think they're particularly rare nor valuable, unless you happen to have some peculiar model.

pontus said:
Also, out of curiosity, is there a reason we don't have an Amiga section in the forums?
Click to expand...
Well, we have the Commodore section. Considering how many Amiga related posts it gets, I'm not too surprised there's no separate forum ;-)
 
It's not particularly rare but they do seem to still be desirable to most folks. On Feebay they do ok and a lot of time are above $50 with no software, depending on the model of card.

Yes it's basically a PC on a card. It allows you to connect a PC hard drive and floppy to it usually, and boots in a window with the software (Which can probably be found on aminet.net).

There are different versions of the bridgeboard that have different processors (8088, 80286, 80386 and I'm not sure if they went higher but recall a 486 board at one point that obviously sold for more than I was willing to put down).

Fun to have. It also allows you to use the two ISA slots in the A2000 with PC compatible cards, like a NIC and whatever.

- John
 
The 486 board seemed to be a 386 one with a 486sx in it or some other 386 to 486 chip.

I used to have a 286 bridgeboard and gave it to a friend and snagged a XT bridgeboard. Mostly I use it to transfer files using an ISA ethernet card since it is faster then using the amigas serial port (and I am too cheap to pay $150 for an Amiga network card).

The A2000 cames with a few ISA slots (8 and 16 bit) you can load up with cards if needed and run like a real computer even with its own video card and monitor. Or you can use the Amigas monitor for CGA mode.
 
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