³¼BRIDGEBOARDS¼³
¹

Ever  since   the 'birth' of the Amiga,
different  kinds  of  PC emulators have
been  available.   Some   of  the  most
popular  ones  lately   have  been  the
Vortex   ATOnce   and    ATOnce   Plus,
offering   an   8/16    MHz  286.   The
problem,  though,  is,  that  these are
not   hardware-expandable,   and  their
compatibility  isn't   sufficient.  Ac-
cording  to some  dealers, only 75 % of
PC  software  runs  on ATOnce, and that
definitely  isn't  enough  to call it a
reliable PC.

The   solution   is  the  bridgeboards,
which   ARE   hardware-expandable,  and
actually offer you  a 'real' PC to work
with.   The  bridgeboards  are, as most
of  you  will know, only  available for
the Amiga 2000.

Currently,  3  different   bridgeboards
are  available:   The  A2088  (4.77 MHz
8088  XT),  the A2286 (8 MHz  80286 AT)
and  the A2386 (20 MHz  80386 SX).  The
A2088  and A2286 come  with a 5.25 inch
floppy drive and MS-DOS  (3.3 I think),
and  the  A2386 comes  with MS-DOS 5.0.
All  cards  support   PC  partitions on
Amiga harddisks.  A lot  of people have
already  purchased one of  these cards,
and others are, like I, thinking  about
doing so.

Now,  a  warning  to Danes:  Do  NOT, I
repeat  do  NOT  buy  these   cards  in
Denmark, the prices  are f......  high.
Check the following list:

          Denmark      Germany
A2088       2855         500
A2286       4695        1800
A2386       ????        4000

(All prices are in  DKK, 1 DM = 4 DKK.)

The A2386 doesn't  seem to be available
in  Denmark  (yet?),  so   no  price is
listed  for that one.  The  Danish pri-
ces  are taken from "Amiga  Warehouse",
and  the  German prices are taken  from
"BBM  Datensysteme".   As you can  see,
going   to   Germany   to    buy   your
bridgeboard  will  save you  many times
the price of the ticket to Germany.

Now,  what  I would like to see here in
Top  Secret   is  a  complete review of
these  bridgeboards,  so  if any of you
have  tried  all 3, thus  being able to
compare   them,  especially  whether or
not buying  the A2386 will get you good
value   for   money,  please  write  an
article about it for Top Secret.


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