Commodore History shorts The 386SX Bridgeboard

E364 - the legendary Commodore 386 bridge-board. the fastest (at the time) model of bridge-board you could get. later superseded by the Golden gate 486 that was short-lived. and while i say emulation card probably way too many times in this video, its is NOT emulation, my brain is just stuck in the wrong gear, this is an entire single board computer that is shared through the Amiga Janus software and utilities. yet is totally independent from the Amiga. Enjoy! this card also occupies 512kb of Z2 ram space. it would NOT work with my Expansion Systems board, hence why i made mine 4mb to be compatible for this video,
links
10MARC 2088 bridge board video : • Amiga A2088 Bridgeboar...

[@a4000t]

There is a 486 chip that could replace the 386 chips on these,there was actually a service where you could send it in and have it done long ago. There are also clip on make-it-486 style chips. The 2386 bridgeboard could use the Diamond Stealth vga card to overclock the ISA bus also.

[@JS-wl3gi]

That is what make Amiga great for at least a decade. Your not going to find a computer running 3 different systems in one Amiga, PC, Mac. Now they have virtual machines.

[@Shadamus]

Back in the day, I had an A-2000 w/286 bridgeboard. I needed DOS software for school, but had been an Amiga guy since the 1000 came out. I put in a 16-bit VGA card and ran a separate monitor (put a plank on top of the 2000 case to hold both monitors side-by-side), and an ST-506 HDD controller in an 8-bit slot hooked up to a 30MB drive. I couldn't afford a SCSI drive on Amiga, so had a workbench boot floppy on the Amiga that I'd edited the start sequence to boot the BB, then wait for around 45 seconds, which gave the BB time to boot and its autoexec would share back (with the commodore utilities) a partition on the 30MB Winchester drive back to the Amiga as DH0: then the workbench disk's startup would resume, executing the rest of startup from a script on DH0: and finish booting from the shared HDD... I sold that whole rig to a friend in 1993... wish I still had it... even if that 30MB drive sounded like someone smacking a metal garbage-can lid with a screwdriver...

[@James_T_Quirk]

Yeah Commodore was putting some cheap 30megs in those, sounded like my knees do now ... But Having a HDD on Amiga Side as Well would have cut down boot up times ..

[@Shadamus]

@@James_T_Quirk I was a PC-builder for shop as well as for people on the side back then, so had a parts stash of outdated video cards HDD controllers, drives, etc... I think the VGA card only had 256Kb of frame-buffer on it... IDE drives were already out, and much larger/faster than the ST-506/Winchester I had a controller and drive for... worked well enough at the time, and I got to learn a lot about how the system was setup to get it all running together. Definitely good times.

[@dgsurfer]

Janus was an ancient Roman god usually depicted as having two faces, facing away from each other. so quite a good name for the software

[@Toby_Q]

The Kung-Fu chop was a little tough to watch...

[@adamlongaway]

Always assumed the bridge board would reboot into a "PC mode". Seeing this run in an Amiga window is wildly futuristic.

[@DavePoo2]

I always felt that this card was Commodore's solution to them not having good software support. Companies like Microsoft were not producing software for the Amiga, so they thought "no problem, we'll just throw a PC inside the Amiga". What a strange world it was back then.

[@HoldandModify]

Thank you for this vid! Finally a nice clean tight overview of that thing. I’ve known what it is but never what it did, exactly. And other videos about it are two hours long. No thanks. Heh.

[@telmnstr]

Commodore should have allowed the Amiga to gain access to the ISA slots without a bridge card/Dos/Windows to take advantage of things like NE2000 network cards. When my family looked at the Amiga they tried to sell on the idea it could be upgraded to run PC software, but it was so terribly expensive. A2000 + HDD + Monitor (low resolution) was already well over $3000 and the bridgecard, VGA monitor and VGA adapter would add another $2000 I think. 386-25 Gateway 2000 won out and no regrets.

[@Marinus_Retro_Lounge]

As always, very informative Video, bringing back the memories of the technology from the past. Stay healthy. Best regards from Germany.

[@alanhaynes4576]

Chris, I have one of these cards in the garage. Also have a GG 386sx with a Make it 486 chip. The Makeit486 will fit either the Commodore 386sx or the GG 386sx as they are both 25mhz. I believe with the 486 it can run Windows98. Anyway, thanks for sharing.

[@10MARC]

I really need to fix my 386 Bridgeboard. She works a bit, but not 100%. I also have a 16 bit Multifunction ISA card with VGA, Floppy, IDE, Serial and Parallel ports that made my Amiga 3000 with my 386 Bridgeboard a really nice Windows 3.1 machine!

[@kencreppin2146]

Back in the day, I had an Amiga 1000 with an Expansion box that contained 2 slots for Amiga cards. I had a 2088 BridgeBoard and an 8MB memory board. Stupid me gave it all away along with a ton of other stuff. When will Dr. Chris build the Time Machine that will allow me to go back in time and kick myself for even thinking of giving it away....

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

if i do its going to be a one way trip

[@stephenbruce8320]

Back in the day when I first set eyes on the A2000 I said it was the one solution to meet everyone's needs be it Amiga, MAC or PC all in one box. To me that was wicked awesome and my desire to have an A2000 was stronger than the Force in Star Wars. A friend of mine had an A2000HD which in time he sold to me, and it came with an AMAX II, 7 port Serial Card, obviously a hard drive controller and a Quantum HD which lived until a couple years ago. I never put a Bridgeboard in it but never lost the desire to do so. I still have that A2000HD it lives in a server rack, still works, has tons of expansions and is still my favorite Amiga but it's the Amiga I have had the longest but not necessarily the most powerful one I own but it's still my favorite. One day I might install a Bridgeboard just to do it but honestly, it's not a priority but a possibility.

[@kingforaday8725]

Yeah, me too. I eventually gave up getting my bridgeboard to work and just bought a PC!!!

[@pauledwards2817]

Had a Vortex 486SLC2 bridgeboard and ruined it trying to remove a heatsink! Tears flow when I think about it. It was In the 68060 3000T with Cybervision 64 I sold for peanuts in 2002. A dumb year. Oh and the desktop 3000 Ieft with a friend a never saw again. Battery meltdown I expect.

[@GadgetUK164]

Very cool! Would love to buy one of these at some point - pretty rare now though =/

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

email me

[@kingforaday8725]

"Back in the day" I acquired a bridgeboard for my Amiga 2000. However back then I was the only one in my neck of the woods with a 2000. Everyone else had a 500 and a few had a 1000. So support was basically non existent except what I could glean from a few BBS's where answers were few and far between.

[@poshpaul55]

Cool chris love this stuff 👍👍

[@memadmax69]

Very nice, adrians digital basement did a couple of videos on this card as well. All very nice. I wonder if its possible to create a modern version of this with better drivers and hardware... Hmmmm........

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

See my video on the fs-97c sbc

[@James_T_Quirk]

Well, Not to bang anyone's Drum here, But Pimiga springs to mind, if it can emulated a Amiga with CPU Cycles to spare, then running a TASK of Wine or a better PC as well as Amiga, may be a goer, but rewriting the Janus Software, is a another Labor of love ... BUT it looks to me a doable thing, getting going in Raspberry Pi Emulations, But I will wait, to try, as I got some Orange Pi 5's coming soon, some extra grunt never hurt any code .. ;)

[@AaronBond007]

I remember we had an Amiga in our store (used computers, "The Byte Brokers" which is gone now)... it was cool.... never bought one those, as I remember the cost was high and well clones were cheap lol.

[@bobrandale4864]

3:25 - My A2000 only has the 1/2 meg chip ram, and doesn't recognize the MegAChip I have... 8:40 - I've noticed that Amiga's regular install usually copies printer and language files that I haven't selected as well...

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

what agnus do you have in your amiga without the megachip, you have to do the solder blob and slice on some to get it to 1mb

[@bobrandale4864]

@@ChrisEdwardsRestoration Board says FAT LADY above the socket: C= CSG 8372AR3 0704-01 1381 23

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

@@bobrandale4864 shes a 1mb agnus.

[@bobrandale4864]

@@ChrisEdwardsRestoration Thanks, but it only shows half meg when running...

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

what rev board? if its never been solderblob'd by you it will always be 512k. you need to tell it its 1mb, a rev4 has a jumper J500 slice and move J101 to the left side, the rev6 you solder blob J101 to the opposite position

[@gedgedk4929]

Sweet now can we get it to a gui state :)

[@wishusknight3009]

I think there is a way to give the amiga side more ram without taking any usable ram away from the BB. Far as I know the BB only needed 64k of space in its upper reserved stack. And all of its onboard ram would be obscured from the Zorro bus. But it has been a while since i had it setup.

[@wskinnyodden]

Hey! Have you thought of trying to put a 486SLC upgrade module on this? The Ti/Cx 486SLC 33Mhz should work on this nicely :) Note that for decent compatibility the 487SLC FPU should be added too or at least the 80387.

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

Check out my Video on the fs97-c sbc. Its a pentium4

[@jimmihenry]

Please share the intel about Amiga DOS. Did Billy the "philanthropist" Gates create the Amiga DOS?

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

Its just ms dos licensed by Commodore

[@patracy]

I've always wanted a bridgeboard. I had a 8088, but I never really used it. I should have kept it. I've got a Pentium (I think, I need to check) SBC that I'll eventually toss in one of the 2000s.

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

i have the Pentium4 SBC from the videos i did last year or two in my other A2000, rocks windows 98 se and some dos4gw games.

[@byrons8956]

I always wanted to see how much I could upgrade one of the Amiga Bridgeboards with the old IBM PC CPU hupgrade ardware kits at one time did on work PCs

[@herdware]

Really should get a bridgeboard for my A2000 one of these days.

[@bobrandale4864]

I just re-watched this video in hopes to see how to plug in the internal drive cable. The cable is keyed, but the board is missing one pin and not "keyed". The 1 pin isn't noted on the board either... Thanx-a-bunch! Also, I see the drive port on the card, so I'm assuming that I can plug in an external 3.5" drive in the back?

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

Pin1 is the top usually. And i think this 8086 one can use an amiga external as a drive B but it needs the 5.25 drive A to boot itself 286 and 386 Boards could do more

[@bobrandale4864]

Yep, I assumed the external drive would be B. So the blue stripe on the cable goes up?

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

@bobrandale4864 its keyed i think it only fits one way

[@andrewenglish3810]

Now you gotta find yourself a 486 card next :)

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

hah i have the pentium sbc from my older videos still,

[@ReadGospelOfJohn]

30 years ago, I would be amazed 😉...

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

hence the title commodore History shorts.

[@James_T_Quirk]

I really like your Video's, To The Point !!, Thanks, So I have a few Bridgeboards here, but 286 & XT so not as fast as that nifty bit of Kit, but if you want it boot faster, give it it's own HDD, Plugging a PC I/O&HDD Card on bridgeboard side for my older cards, Also if you can add a Video Card that also Helps to prove its 2 Computers, but joined at the Hip .. All this is Fascinating look at how we use to do things, BUT Pimiga turns that on it's head as I know, I have some Amiga accelerators here, Inc the Cyberstorm 060 with 128meg ram fitted (I was a Commodore Dealer & Lightwave nut) but if Raspberry Pi Can ran Faster than that, then Amiga's stay in the Cupboard, Amiberry is a GodSend if you want to Run a Lightwave Render Farm, you can do it on your desktop, Not in your Garage taken over by 10 A2000's & Cohorts ... I wish my desk was as neat as yours .. :)

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

Love your youtube name!

[@James_T_Quirk]

@@ChrisEdwardsRestoration Thanks, It's a Old Nick from IRC Days, but I never Joined some sites or social media, so there are imposters, and Variations with Numbers etc after it, so not as special as it once was .. So Quiz them on Amiga's see what they know !!! ..;)

[@marioserrano5087]

Nice video, how can I send my Amiga for repairs. .? Thank you. COMMODORE AMIGA FOR EVER

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

Depends on whats wrong with them. Email me

[@marioserrano5087]

@@ChrisEdwardsRestoration what’s your email? Thank you

[@JimmYJammA2099]

Great video, thank you! What is the make and model of that fun clock/pixel display?

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

Divoom tivoo from divoom.com. The wall one is a pixoo max 32

[@boydpukalo8980]

Cool-what about the ReA4091 video you mentioned when introducing the card?

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

Im getting there remember my videos are about three months out

[@blazer666del]

The bridgeboard I owned converted me to the PC.. shame.. but the Amiga was dying...

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

its ok we all went somewhere!

[@manueljesus3147]

That thing was a real turd... BUT.. find a sigma designs Winstorm card. It featured a sound card, VGA true color video, and CD Rom co troller all on a 16 bit card. Worked great with the 386BB

[@josephphillips9243]

Am I right in thinking the only reason to create such a card is because Commodore could see the threat of PC and its clones. Who knows what could have been if Commodore did not go bust, maybe the Commodore PC would have been the future of the Amiga.

[@James_T_Quirk]

There are many theories, My Fav is The Amiga was Sunk, the PC at the Time of A1000 had 4 Colours & went Beep, Amiga had Stereo & Lots of Colour, but Strangely the Ex-IBM Guy who Became Chief of Commodore refused to Update Amiga Chips, saving "the Shareholders money" by maximum profit on original Chipset, Only Minor upgrades for "Business Class" Machines like A2000,A3000,A4000 Lines, Until IBM & Others Caught up & Past some of Amiga's Capabilities, (Apple bolting a Amiga on the Side of a Mac, Calling it a Toaster, So Mac's could work with Video), after reducing Commodore & Amiga to the Toy aisle, leaving CBM, Microsoft Snapped him up for a plum Job, almost rewarding for him..

[@johnps1670]

Commodore made PCs, didn't work out. And Commodore didn't license Amiga OS as far as I know.