Re:FAP80, a retro computer without the retro baggage
by vidarh on Thursday January 19, 2017 @07:19PM
(#13440704)
That's funny - My 68000 based Amiga 2000 had a SCSI card in it with a Z80 on it.
That machine was a real monster - I had a bridge-board in it: the A2000 had both ISA and Zorro-II (Amiga proprietary) buses, with one ISA and one Zorro-II slot in line so that you could buy a bridge-board that held an 8086 etc. on it to basically give you a "PC in a window" on your Amiga.
I'd then bolted a 286 accelerator board onto it, and a 68020 accelerator board onto the Amiga-side (I think both were of the type that slotted into the CPU socket andwhere you re-seated the CPU in the accelerator in case you wanted to switch to the slower CPU for compatibility reasons)
On top of that the Amiga 2000 and Amiga 500's used an 6502-compatible SOC with onboard RAM and PROM as their keyboard controllers.
So that one machine had a 68000 (though not usually running), 68020, 8086 (not usually running), 80286, Z80 and a 6502-compatible. I found it quite pleasing to have one machine with representatives of four of the most common CPU families at the time in it.
> Which is why I've never really understood people who focus on one chip to "define" a system, it really is about all the parts playing in harmony.
It was about identity in a sense when so much was done in assembler on the main CPU, and most people are never aware of those auxiliary CPU's.
That machine was a real monster - I had a bridge-board in it: the A2000 had both ISA and Zorro-II (Amiga proprietary) buses, with one ISA and one Zorro-II slot in line so that you could buy a bridge-board that held an 8086 etc. on it to basically give you a "PC in a window" on your Amiga.
I'd then bolted a 286 accelerator board onto it, and a 68020 accelerator board onto the Amiga-side (I think both were of the type that slotted into the CPU socket andwhere you re-seated the CPU in the accelerator in case you wanted to switch to the slower CPU for compatibility reasons)
On top of that the Amiga 2000 and Amiga 500's used an 6502-compatible SOC with onboard RAM and PROM as their keyboard controllers.
So that one machine had a 68000 (though not usually running), 68020, 8086 (not usually running), 80286, Z80 and a 6502-compatible. I found it quite pleasing to have one machine with representatives of four of the most common CPU families at the time in it.
> Which is why I've never really understood people who focus on one chip to "define" a system, it really is about all the parts playing in harmony.
It was about identity in a sense when so much was done in assembler on the main CPU, and most people are never aware of those auxiliary CPU's.