I'm CC:ing amiga-dev as the suggestions on intelligent bridgecard
usages may interest someone enough to trigger him to start to work
on such support.

>>>>> "Quetzalcoatl" == Quetzalcoatl Bradley <qbradley@sol.uvic.ca> writes:

Quetzalcoatl> Hello!  I am interested in this work.  I am borrowing a
Quetzalcoatl> A2286 (286 bridgeboard) which I may purchase for $30 or
Quetzalcoatl> something if I can find a use for it.  I am interested
Quetzalcoatl> in SVGA support.

As of today, only the GoldenGateII is supported.  I have reason to
believe that the CrossLink will reasonably soon be supported as well.
When it comes to the intelligent bridges like the A2*86 series, I
haven't heard of any volunteers to do the work.  That is, if you
aren't one.  One has to have a deal of programming info of both
sides of the bridge to know how it should be done.  I don't have
such information.

Quetzalcoatl> Here's an idea, how about actual bridge board support?!
Quetzalcoatl> it'd be nice to be able to use the bridgeboard when I
Quetzalcoatl> was running NetBSD as something other than a "bridge".

I think a DOS emulator could be written spawning the processes to
the intel processor, yes, but I won't write it.  I think I/O processing
can be done by the Intel cpu, like handling SLIP/PPP onboard and
talk to the Moto side like a real network card.  When dealing with
network interfaces some of the higher level protocols like TCP and
UDP could be done.  Video acceleration could be achieved with dumb
VGA cards etc...  Now, all this has to be done by someone else than
me.

Quetzalcoatl> I'd be glad to beta test any of this stuff.  I don't
Quetzalcoatl> have a com port card, but I could probably pick one up
Quetzalcoatl> for a few dollars, I think I will.  I am not even nearly
Quetzalcoatl> computer illiterate so I think I could probably
Quetzalcoatl> contribute *something* useful to this effort.

I'm very sorry you won't be able to use my framework with the A2286 yet.
Maybe if I got to borrow some such card together with full technical info
I could find time to do it.  As it looks now, someone else (you) have to
add the A2286 support.  But, when it's done, my framework will see to
that all isa-drivers ported, directly can be used on that bridge.

Niklas

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