Ohhh too bad im on Spain, i was looking for this board for YEARS, i will love to try repair!! since was a kid i wanted one

Will be cool to make a A500 slot to zorro II!

Alex_03 wrote on 2024-05-05, 17:48:

With that being said, I don't want to try to repair it. However I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask you folks if there is still anything of value here? Parts? chips? PALs/GALs? If somebody wants this whole board as a parts unit it can be theirs for the cost of me shipping it too them.

Just for parts there isn't much here, there are some RAMs in unusual packages but those are difficult to desolder (and you don't want to overheat them). PALs are one-time programmable so of little use, except for direct replacement like the VLSI chips. Don't remove them out of sockets because in 2-3 months you'll forget which is which. Photos help but if you put them in a box it'll require fishing them out later.

I think selling the whole thing for shipping costs would be the best thing to do. I'm not much of Amiga fan though 😀

Deunan wrote on 2024-05-05, 22:42:

Alex_03 wrote on 2024-05-05, 17:48:

With that being said, I don't want to try to repair it. However I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask you folks if there is still anything of value here? Parts? chips? PALs/GALs? If somebody wants this whole board as a parts unit it can be theirs for the cost of me shipping it too them.

Just for parts there isn't much here, there are some RAMs in unusual packages but those are difficult to desolder (and you don't want to overheat them). PALs are one-time programmable so of little use, except for direct replacement like the VLSI chips. Don't remove them out of sockets because in 2-3 months you'll forget which is which. Photos help but if you put them in a box it'll require fishing them out later.

I think selling the whole thing for shipping costs would be the best thing to do. I'm not much of Amiga fan though 😀

To be honest, I'm not even sure if I had used it if it was working.

The Janus software does merely support CGA and MDA (no Hercules!), so there's little of 286/386 era software that would run well.

The lack of VGA is severely limiting the use here (an ISA VGA card can be installed, but it requires its own monitor).

Any software emulator is more feature-complete here, maybe.
Or any other bridge board (Golden Gate etc), maybe.

Memory managers can make use of a 386 processors, though.
Windows will also run in 386 Enhanced-Mode, of course. But with CGA graphics..

That being said, saving the PALs might be worth it (if the Amiga community hasn't made backups of them yet).
It could help other bridge board users to fix their boards. 🙂

These are just my rwo cents, of course. I know very little about Amigas by comparison.

Deunan wrote on 2024-05-05, 22:42:

Just for parts there isn't much here, there are some RAMs in unusual packages but those are difficult to desolder (and you don't want to overheat them).

These are actually socketed, so not difficult to remove if I wanted to.

You have PM

Jo22 wrote on 2024-05-05, 23:00:

To be honest, I'm not even sure if I had used it if it was working.

The Janus software does merely support CGA and MDA (no Hercules!), so there's little of 286/386 era software that would run well.

Common use of bridge boards is just to run a shim program which allows the Amiga side to utilize an ISA ethernet card, which are more common than Zorro ethernet cards.

bakemono wrote on 2024-05-06, 14:11:

Jo22 wrote on 2024-05-05, 23:00:

To be honest, I'm not even sure if I had used it if it was working.

The Janus software does merely support CGA and MDA (no Hercules!), so there's little of 286/386 era software that would run well.

Common use of bridge boards is just to run a shim program which allows the Amiga side to utilize an ISA ethernet card, which are more common than Zorro ethernet cards.

Good point, I remember. Getting access to cheap AT-Bus HDDs was one of these applications, I believe.
But still, the Commodore bridgeboards were a bit overpriced and didn't do PC platform any justice.

And the lack of Hercules support is something that still bothers me.
I'm ashamed of those Commodore engineers who thought that plain IBM™ MDA was good enough (CGA isn't worth being mentioned).
Because it doesn't (didn't) reflect reality in any way. Even if the Amiga didn't have the screen resolution, a virtual screen with scroll bars was possible.
In fact, I do have an 1980s laptop here, which does feature this. It's the Halikan 286.

Sometimes I wonder if this was done on purpose, so that Amiga fans could continue to make fun of PC hardware.
On the other hands, the Commodore bridgeboards never really evolved, were deeply stuck in the past.
Everything was based on that A2088XT PC card. Which itself was being based off that A1060 sidecar, I assume.

PS: There are pass-through cards, also, I believe. So the Amiga side can see the ISA slots. Golden Gate II is such a card, I think.
There's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dFLsT5T0RQ

I have no experience of such boards, though. Not sure how good they were.

Edit: By "CGA isn't worth being mentioned" I meant in a business context, I didn't mean to sound snobbish.
I mean who buys an extremely expensive PC emulator hardware (more expensive than the Amiga itself) just to play Alley Cat?

If there's anything an Amiga power user misses, it's not a low-end gaming experience, but PC productivity software (ACAD, floor planning software, Word perfect, Lotus 1-2-3).

Or business "games" to a stretch, like golf simulations, strip poker, ms flight simulator or a professional chess game.

Niche games not natively available on the Amiga platform.
And that's were Hercules was very important, simply. It was monochrome, but hi-def.

Psion chess in Hercules mode looks way more elegant than in CGA, for example.
To an avid chess player, this might be important.
Edit: To give an idea how awesome Psion Chess and Hercules graphics could be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx2aNlTqzvs&t=660