From dvsg0223@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu Wed Nov 18 22:45:39 1992 Received: from uxa.cso.uiuc.edu by toadflax.cs.ucdavis.edu (4.1/UCD.CS.2.0) id AA22335; Wed, 18 Nov 92 22:45:37 PST Received: by uxa.cso.uiuc.edu id AA11005 (5.67a/IDA-1.5 for announce@cs.ucdavis.edu); Thu, 19 Nov 1992 00:45:32 -0600 From: David Salamon Message-Id: <199211190645.AA11005@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> Subject: GoldenGateII Amiga <-> PC bus Interface To: announce@cs.ucdavis.edu Date: Thu, 19 Nov 92 0:45:30 CST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Status: RO Specifications for the GoldenGate II Bridgecard SUMMARY ------- The GoldenGate II bridgecard lets you lets you use AT-compatible IBM plug- in cards in your Amiga PC slots as Amiga devices, controlled by Amiga software. Software support currently includes drivers for PC serial and printer ports, with more exotic cards supported through the software emulator CrossPC (available with CrossDOS 5.0 from Consultron). PC HARDWARE SUPPORT ------------------- The GoldenGate II bridgecard will support almost all non-DMA PC plug in boards which are "AT-compatible", i.e. can support 8 MHz bus accesses. This includes such popular items as internal modems, multi-IO boards, non-DMA ethernet boards, VGA boards, A/D boards, etc. Access to the PC cards is at full Amiga Zorro II bus speed unless wait state support is turned on. The following IBM AT bus signals are supported: IO address space from hex $0000 to $7FFF (first 32K) Memory address space from hex $90000 to $FFFFF (448K) 16 bit data bus All AT bus interrupts Wait states (IOCHRDY signal) for both IO and memory access 14.31818 MHz clock (OSC signal) from on-board crystal oscillator 7.2 MHz processor clock (CLK signal) BALE signal AMIGA HARDWARE DETAILS ---------------------- The GoldenGate II bridgecard AUTOCONFIGs as a Zorro II card, and it can be "shut up" off the bus. The autoconfig size is 1 Meg to correctly map all of the PC memory locations. All address and data lines to the PC bus are buffered to avoid loading. ON-BOARD REGISTERS ------------------ The GoldenGate II bridgecard includes 3 software accessable registers. Register 1 is read-only, and reports the status of all the interrupt lines, the master interrupt enable, and the wait-state control. This is a 16 bit register. Register 2 is read/write; when read, disables the master interrupt enable and returns the same 16 bit value as register 1. When register 2 is written to, it sets the master interrupt enable. Register 3 is read/write, and it toggles the support for wait states. When wait-states are enabled, a default of one wait state (one Amiga clock cycle) is inserted into each bus read or write to maintain IBM bus cycle wait state compatibility. SOFTWARE DRIVER SUPPORT ----------------------- Due to a lack of standards in the IBM community, there is simply no way to provide Amiga software support for all possible plug-in cards. A small number of standards DO exist, however, and we will provide drivers for some of these, with more coming out whenever possible. The basic software package (compatible with the previous GoldenGate board) is for serial and parallel ports: ibmser.device a replacement serial device for internal modems and multi-IO cards. Includes automatic use of the 16550 FIFO buffer when available. Support for up to 4 serial ports at once, equivalent of COM1-4. SerPrefs set and save the intial settings of the IBM serial ports. ShowSerial prints out what serial chip is hooked to each IBM port ibmprint.device a new parallel output-only driver for printing through IBM LPT compatible parallel ports on multi-IO cards. Support for up to 3 printers at once, equivalent of LPT1-3. IOWedge a wedge program that allows redirection of serial and parallel port information to the IBM ports even from programs that do not alternate alternate device drivers. NewPortHandler this handler lets you use the new IBM ports directly from the CLI, by creating a mountlist entry. For example, you can mount IBMPRT: and then issue a CLI command to copy a file to the IBMPRT: device. Wait this is a small program to toggle wait state support on and off. All programs require AmigaDOS 2.0, and were written by Dan Babcock (thanks Dan!!). Details for accessing IBM IO and memory space through the GoldenGate II will be in the documentation. Most boards that do not try to emulate system functions (like ports) will not need device drivers; they can be accessed directly from your programs in C or any other high level language. For more exotic applications, the GoldenGate bridgecard is compatible with the software IBM emulator "CrossPC" sold by Consultron with CrossDOS 5.0. CrossPC will automatically find the GoldenGate bridgecard if it is installed, and map any IO location calls to the GoldenGate card. This allows you to use your IBM driver software directly. Thanks to CrossPC and IBeM author Mark Tomlinson for this! Author Chris Hames of PC-Task has also expressed an interest in putting similar GoldenGate compatibility into his emulator, and this should be available in the future. GOLDENGATE II SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ------------------------------ The GoldenGate II bridgecard occupies one Zorro II slot aligned with an IBM AT slot in an Amiga 2000, 2500, 3000, or 4000. It has essentially the same form factor as an XT bridgeboard. You will need at least one additional open PC-AT slot for your plug-in PC card. The GoldenGate II requires 1 Meg of autoconfig memory space to be available. AVAILABILITY AND PRICE ---------------------- I am selling the GoldenGate II bridgecard in two ways: (a) As a kit with all parts and assembly instructions, for US$95 (You should have some soldering experience to assemble this) (b) Fully assembled. for US$115 Shipping charges will be US$3 within the US, US$5 to Canada, and US$10 to anywhere else. If you are interested, please send me email at d-salamon@uiuc.edu