Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Product Marketing Tutorial (was Re: The Amiga is Loosing Ground...)
Keywords: Lock, locksmith, door, security, lost my keys, boats, canals,...
Message-ID: <65003@sun.uucp>
Date: 19 Aug 88 20:06:46 GMT
References: <2167@ssc-vax.UUCP> <64636@sun.uucp> <782@viscous>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 33

In article <782@viscous> brianm@sco.COM (Brian Moffet) writes:
> Let me describe basically how the bridgeboard and the SCO Xenix OS
> works.  The bridgeboard will allow a DOS process to talk to the hardware
> via the BIOS.  This will be for the Video board most importantly,
> and possibly other hardware.     Now, SCO xenix does _not_ use the 
> BIOS at all.  It goes straight to the hardware.

I believe you are mistaken Brian. One of the reasons that the Amiga display
was fairly "slow" on the BridgeCard was that it detects any write to the
display addresses in the PC address space and then scans that memory for
changes and updates the Amiga screen. You should know that the BridgeCard
and the AT BridgeCard run Flight Simulator II and Jet, and a whole bunch
of other things that go "Direct to the Hardware." 

> Therefore, using SCO Xenix, which needs almost exact *hardware* 
> compatability with an AT, on the bridgeboard will not work.
> I seriously doubt that the Bridge board gives AT *hardware* 
> compatability.

And this is where you are mistaken. The BridgeBoard is an *exact* PC 
clone on a board, right down to the DMA controller and Timer chips. 
(Well as exact as the Faraday PC-Clone chip set can make it.) I have
seen Digital Researches Concurrent DOS running on a Bridge Board. If
SCO Xenix runs on more than 50% of the AT clones available on the market,
I am pretty darn sure it will work on the AT Bridgeboard. 

Actually, for a pretty nice system, I would like to run Xenix or UNIX on
a BridgeCard and X11 on the Amiga (using the bus as a network). You could
have a really neat system this way. Seamless multiprocessing.

--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.