Personal Review of the 1060 SIDECAR For the AMIGA A-1000 By Scott Castledine. The Sidecar is essentially an IBM XT in a box! It attaches to the expansion slot on the right hand side of the Amiga, allowing the Amiga to run MS-DOS using hardware rather than a software emulator. When the Sidecar was first brought out to Australia, it cost in the region of $1700 and shocked a lot of prospective IBMers using the Amiga while awaiting the MS-DOS capability. You would have to have been desperate for IBM compatibility to purchase one at that price or at least had a bottomless pocket of green-backs and just wanted the latest wizz-bang add-on for the Amiga! I purchased mine for a reasonable $750 with the full 512K RAM installed. My main reason for buying one was not because I needed or wanted an IBM hanging off the side of my Amiga, but a cheap (and instantly available) hard disk for my beloved Amiga. At the time the hard disks for the Amiga were very scarce and expensive at around $2000 for 20Mb. I bought the Sidecar and a 20Mb Tandon Hard Disk with controller card for $1800! This might not sound like a BIG saving but remember you actually get a computer included in that reduced price. Unpacking the A1060 Sidecar from the box I found a cardboard envelope with two 5.25 inch floppies inside: An MS-DOS 3.2 disk and the GWBASIC and utilities disk. These disks had "A-2000 PC-Emulator" printed on them and don't refer to the 1060 Sidecar at all. Not to worry as the A-2000 Bridgecard is identical in its functions to the 2000 as the 1060 is to the 1000. It just made me realise that Commodore are putting more emphasis on their newer models and the 1000+Sidecar partnership is not as important. Also in the envelope where two 3.5 inch floppies: A Kickstart 1.2 and a A1060 Workbench 1.2. This disk has the startup-sequence to find and boot the Sidecar (and hard disk if installed). I found my hard disk would not fit inside the Sidecar very neatly so decided to put it in a half-height floppy drive box and sit it on top of the Sidecar. This presented a few small problems. The leads were a bit short and getting the power out to the unit was the main hassle. No REAL problem, just lengthen them. Well, there it is, all ready to plug into my A-1000. Reading the two sets of instructions explained the connection and setup. This included the setting of the DIP switches to tell it there was an extra 256K of RAM and a Hard Drive connected. I defy anyone who can take the lid off their Sidecar more than a couple of times without breaking one of the wires to the power LED! A spot of solder fixed that, but was an inconvenience. If someone was able to fit a hard disk inside the Sidecar the power LED would be handy wired up to the disk drive, then the power light on the AMIGA side could be used to indicate that the machines were on (if you couldn't hear the two fans). The Instructions include a thin 40 page book called "Personal Computer AMIGA 1060 SIDECAR User Manual" which is an explanation of how to connect the Sidecar to the Amiga and hardware setup including installation of RAM etc. The other A4 corner-stapled 14 page "Amiga A1060 Contents Check List And Addenda" includes a reasonable description of the setup software etc. It explains how to use Virtual drives and transfer files from IBM to Amiga and vice versa. In all, better than the 40 page book for useful information! In the back of the Addenda is a software registration form for updates to the system software I guess. An AUSTRALIAN address too!! Well, moving all the gear around on the desk to make room for the Sidecar, I finally nursed it into place being very careful that the edgecard and mouse ports lined up. I was surprised how easy it was to marry the two units. Although, I wouldn't want to do it too often through fear of breaking the PCB. Unplug the power cord from the back of the Amiga and plug it into the 1060. Then you have the pass-through lead from the Sidecar to the Amiga. It warns that the AMIGA MUST BE ON before you switch on the power to the Sidecar. A piece of tape over the Amiga's switch makes sure you don't inadvertantly switch it off there. You have to reach over the back and feel around for the switch on the Sidecar from now on!! You do get used to where it is though and becomes second nature after a short while. I have forgotten a switch exists on the Amiga unit! Let's power up! Insert Kickstart then the 1060 Workbench and WAIT.... Firstly I had to boot up the program called "PCdisk" and "PC Color" (in the PC drawer?), this opens up an Amiga window that looks like an IBM screen. I played around with the Amiga pull-down menus that control the IBM display. Removed the borders and changed the colours of the text and background. Running Fdisk in MS-DOS set up the partitions on the hard disk: 75% Amiga and 25% IBM with the IBM partition Activated so it will auto-boot from drive C:. I formatted the IBM side while I was there and went and had a coffee. Once I labeled it and had the system installed I went back to the Amiga and had to format the Amiga partition. Two cups of coffee this time!! It used to take forever to boot up so I looked at the Startup-sequence to see why. It had many IF EXISTS statements that tested to see if the Sidecar and hard disk were there or not. I don't run the Amiga without them now so the IF EXISTS statements were edited out and I tailored the copy of Workbench to boot up about twice as fast. (Once I put some software on the hard disk, I had to include a number of ASSIGNments so the Amiga would not ask for the volume to be placed in a floppy drive. This slowed it down again but not too badly.) The chip responsible for the communications between the Sidecar and the Amiga is called JANUS (A Roman animistic spirit of doorways) and will allow transfer of files between the two machines. A very handy and easy to use benefit. Under MS-DOS you type somthing like: C> AWRITE A:IBMFILE.TXT DF1:AMIGAFILE This would transfer IBMFILE.TXT from drive A: on the Sidecar to df1: on the Amiga and name it AMIGAFILE. This could be loaded into any text editor or word processor on the Amiga without any problem. The other way would be to copy an Amiga file to IBM like this: C> AREAD DF1:AMIGAFILE C:IBMFILE.TXT This would read an Amiga file onto the IBM hard disk. Great for porting C source files from IBM to Amiga or the other way around then just compile them if they are not too machine specific!! "PCdisk" on the Amiga side MUST be running for these commands to operate under MS-DOS. Pretty confusing at first but easily overcome. The Sidecar can use the Amigas RAM as a virtual drive and any other drive device attached to the Amiga. I use RAM and DF1: as Vdrives every time I boot the Sidecar (edit the autoexec.bat file). It is frightfully slow on the floppy but the RAM Vdrive is handy and pretty fast. The Amiga can't use the Sidecar's RAM as expansion and the Sidecar can't use the RAM in the Amiga in any other way than the Vdrive. In one of the manuals supplied with the Sidcar it states there is an expansion card that fits under the 1060 sub-chassis and expands Amiga RAM to 1 meg. As far as I know this expansion card has not been produced, or at least has not made it to Australia! Because the Sidecar uses its own 8088 CPU and RAM and in reality is a full blown XT bar keyboard and monitor, it has the facility to plug in the 8087 math coprocessor which would, as on all XTs, speed up operation of a large number of tasks. The Amiga workbench disk comes with a program called "LPT1S" that assigns the parallel port to the Sidecar and allows you to use your printer without any unplugging. But the serial port is another question... There is no way of accessing that port from the Sidecar. I had to go out and purchase an RS232C card for the Sidecar to use my modem. This cost me $90 but did give me a battery backed clock calendar. This only leaves me one slot left inside the Sidecar as one of the other two is being used by the hard disk controller. Either a serial port built into the 1060 or access to the Amiga's port would have freed up that extra slot but who knows how much more the Sidecar would have cost?! The modem has to be plugged into the Amiga when I want to use that to dial an Amiga BBS then unplug it and plug it back into the Sidecar to dial VIATEL! A big hassle!! I have come up with a semi-solution. I leave the modem plugged into the Sidecar to log onto Amiga BBSs when I want to just download text files and port them across to the Amiga later using AWRITE. Still a problem but faster and easier than the unplugging. But when I want to download ARCed or binary files I HAVE to go through the plugging ritual. Two leads left in the machines and swapped on the back of the modem makes it ALMOST bearable but more costly! I have not yet found any software that won't run properly on the Sidecar. The PC emulation screen need not ever use the MONO window as you have a choice of 2,4,8 or 16 colours in the colour mode so you just select 2 colours for a mono display (easy!). You can change any colour you like using sliders, a la Preferences! I make the text yellow on a black background, but it's a matter of personal choice. You can save these settings to be booted every time you use the IBM window. The Sidecar can use the external Amiga 1010 3.5 inch disk drive you bought for the Amiga as its own external drive. Because the Amiga 1010 drive is dumb it is controlled entirely by the host computer. This means the 1010 will act like a 720K IBM 3.5 inch drive if plugged into the Sidecar (reset the DIP switches to let the Sidecar know it's there). This is handy if you have any 3.5 inch format MS-DOS software or you haven't got a hard disk and want a larger capacity drive for the IBM (and can live without a second drive on the Amiga). Yes, you guessed it - when plugged into the Sidecar, the Amiga can't use the 1010!! Personally, I don't use it on the Sidecar. Now. The keyboard is not designed with an IBM in mind and worries me that Commodore didn't think to design that compatability into the Amiga when they developed the overall machine. Don't tell me they had no idea of developing a unit able to run MS-DOS to be attached later? But surprise me! All the IBM keys are there invisibly overlayed onto your numeric pad and using the [RIGHT A-?] key sequence you can toggle Num Lock, Scroll Lock, Ptr Sc * and plus on the keypad. For all the Pg Up, Pg Dn, Del, Ins etc. you need a good knowledge of an IBM keypad or put labels on the keys (buy Word Perfect the Amiga version and you get neat little stickers). I just try to remember and have got it pretty well sewn up now, but had to draw a diagram to refer to. No illustration of an IBM keypad in the manuals but would have been a handy and thoughtful addition. It seems to chew up some large chunks of memory just being plugged in but that does not conform always. I have a program that insists it needs ALL available memory and tells you to unplug the external drive to give back some 30K or so. Well, that runs alright without the drive, but with the Sidecar still plugged in. BUT, when I try to run VIP Professional I get about 1K of RAM to work with. It has me baffled! Apart from the fact the Sidecar makes the footprint of the overall system quite large on your desk (buy a bigger desk), the too few expansion slots, no room internally for a hard disk (I suppose that would make the footprint even larger or could it have been taller?!) and the incompatability of the keyboard, this add-on in my opinion is of reasonably high quality and is a very useful tool added to the Amiga. It opens the doors to some very powerful software developed for one of the most popular business computers in the world. Not to mention a readily available Hard disk attachment to the Amiga for a reasonable price. For all those out there with a pile of MS-DOS software left over from the days prior to trading in the old compatible on the new Amiga super- computer, the Sidecar is your answer to using that software again AND you can transfer all those text files over to the Amiga without fuss. If you own a real computer at home and use an MS-DOS based system at work you can bring your work home, plug it into the Sidecar and continue on! I have to praise the SIDECAR and have owned one for some time now. I can not find any serious shortcomings of the machine that would outweigh the benefits of owning one when being offered at the reasonable $700-800 area, in fact I personally feel it is good value for what you get! Not many IBM compatibles about these days for that price even without a monitor. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~END OF SIDECAR.RVW ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~