Commodore A1060 Sidecar User manual

Personal Computer
AMIGA 1060
SIDECAR
USER MANUAL
Commodore

Table of Contents
1. Introduction.......................................................................... 3
1.1 Attaching the Sidecar to the Amiga
............................... 3
2. Activating the PC from the Workbench
.......................... 6
3. Activating the PC from a C I
.......................................... 7
4. Emulating the PC
................................................................ 8
4.1 Display modes ...................................................................... 8
4.2 Keyboard............................................................................... 9
4.3 Parallel Port..........................................................................10
5. The PC Display Windows
................................................... 12
5.1 Borders.................................................................................. 12
5.2 Size of the window
............................................................. 12
5.3 Number of Text colors
....................................................... 13
5.4 Changing colors
................................................................... 14
5.5 Multiple windows.................................................................15
5.6 Display priority.....................................................................16
6. Pulldown menus of the PC-window
................................. 17
Appendix A : DIP switches
...................................................... 20
Appendix B : Expansion slots for cards
................................ 25
Appendix C : Connecting external disk drives ..................... 27
Appendix D : Installing a hard disk ...................................... 29
Appendix E : The 8087 numeric co-processor.....................33
Appendix F : RAM expansion for the P C ............................35
Appendix G : RAM expansion for the Amiga
...................... 37
1

PICTURE 2
1 POWER SWITCH 4 EXPANSION PORT
2 POWER CORD 5 MOUSE CONNECTOR
3 FLOPPY DISK CONNECTOR 6 JOYSTICK CONNECTOR
PICTURE 1
2

1. Introdu tion
Welcome to the Commodore Sidecar, a system that combines
hardware and software to give complete IBM-PC compatibility
to your Amiga 1000 computer. This brief tutorial describes how
to set up and use the Sidecar. It presumes that you have already
put together your Amiga and that you know how to operate it.
Please refer to the manual "Introduction to Amiga” for
information about setting up and operating your Amiga.
NOTE: The Sidecar can only be used on an Amiga expanded to
512 KB by means of installing the memory expansion cartridge
(A 1050) in the front of the main computer housing.
This document is not a tutorial on using the IBM-PC. For
information on the correct usage of the PC, you will have to
study the documentation that comes with the IBM-PC operating
system and any application software you choose to use with
your Sidecar.
If you are wondering what IBM software will work with your
Sidecar, the answer is simple: all IBM-PC software will work
with the Sidecar.
1.1 Attaching the Sidecar to the Amiga
WARNING: Before you start, you must make sure that your
Amiga is powered off.
The Sidecar plugs into the side of the Amiga. It fits onto both
the Amiga expansion port and the connectors where the mouse
is attached. The expansion port and connectors are located on
the right side of the Amiga box (when facing the front of the
Amiga).
3

To attach the Sidecar, first you have to clear the way: unplug
the mouse, and remove the cap that covers the Amiga expansion
port. There’s a little slot beneath the cap, where you put your
fingertip to pry the cap off. Apply gentle pressure and the cap
will come loose. Save this cap in case you ever want to detach
the Sidecar from your Amiga. Next, place the Sidecar to the
right of the Amiga and line up the Sidecar’s plugs with the
Amiga’s connectors. The face of the Sidecar should be flush
with the face of the Amiga. When all the Sidecar plugs are
lined up with Amiga connectors, slide the Sidecar gently but
firmly into the Amiga sockets.
You do not have to run a new power cable to the Sidecar,
because the Sidecar has a convenient power-cord extender.
Notice that a cable comes out of the back of the Sidecar. This is
the power-cord extender. Find the cable that runs from the
power outlet to your Amiga, unplug this cable from the Amiga
and plug it into the Sidecar. Then plug the Sidecar’s power-cord
extender into the Amiga, in the socket where the power cable
had been attached to the Amiga. Electricity flows into the
Sidecar, and then through the extender to the Amiga.
On the front of the Sidecar cabinet are the connectors for the
mouse and other controllers. Plug the mouse into the left
connector.
Now you can turn on the power for both the Sidecar and the
Amiga. The power switch for the Amiga is on the left side of
the Amiga, and the power switch for the Sidecar is on the back
of the Sidecar. Turn on the power switch for the Amiga.
Because the Amiga gets its power through the Sidecar, the
Amiga won’t power up until you turn on the power to the
Sidecar. Now turn on the power switch for the Sidecar.
4

Then you go through the normal start-up procedure for your
Amiga, which includes using your own Kickstart and
Workbench disks to initiate the Workbench display.
BEWARE: You must never turn on power to the Sidecar unless
the Amiga is already powered up. Doing so can seriously
damage the Amiga hardware. This is especially important to
note if you do not use the Sidecar power-cord extender and you
choose instead to have separate power cables for the Amiga and
the Sidecar. If you follow the normal procedure of plugging the
Sidecar power-cord extender into the Amiga, you can prevent
this problem entirely.
5

2. Opening the Side ar display programs
When you put the Sidecar disk into one of the disk drives, an
icon for the disk will appear on the Workbench screen. Double
click on the Sidecar disk icon to open the disk’s top drawer. In
the top drawer you will see, among other things, two icons that
look like graphical representations of IBM Personal Computers.
These two icons allow you to open programs that emulate the
two IBM-PC display types: Monochrome and Color.
Notice that one icon is in two colors and has the words "PC
Mono" beneath it. This icon opens the IBM-PC Monochrome
display emulator.The other icon is in 4 colors and is labelled
"PC Color. It opens the program that emulates the IBM-PC
Color display. To open either display, double-click on the
appropriate icon.
When you first unpackage your Sidecar, it is configured to
power up in Monochrome mode, so if you double-click on the
Monochrome icon you will see the diagnostic messages that
come up when the Sidecar is powering up. If you double-click
on the Color icon, you will see a blank window. The displays
will stay like this until you put some software into the Sidecar
disk drive.
If you want to use the colour PC screen, no system messages
will appear. When the screen is opened the cursor will be in the
home position and you must type the following ’blind’:
<RETURN <RETURN MODE C080 <RETURN
Then the DOS prompt ( A> ) will appear and you are ready to
enter commands in the usual fashion.
At this point the Sidecar is ready to run IBM-PC software. You
should put a PC system disk of your choice into the Sidecar’s
floppy disk drive. It might be a PC-DOS disk, an MS-DOS
disk, a CP/M disk, or any IBM-PC application.
6

3. A tivating the PC mode from a CLI
On the Workbench disk that is supplied with the Sidecar there
are two programs that activate the PC mode. To use these from
the C I, install the Sidecar and turn on the sytem as described
above. Insert the KICKSTART disk in the drive and when the
Workbench prompt appears, insert the disk containing the
Sidecar software. When the disk Icon appears, double click on it
to open a workbench.Next open a C I window by opening the
system drawer and clicking on the C I icon. If you wish to
operate the Sidecar as a monochrome PC type :
RUN 'PC MONO' <RETURN
If you wish to operate as a colour PC, type:
RUN 'PC COLOR' <RETURN
You can then proceed as described above.
7

4. Emulating the PC
This section describes some of the IBM-PC characteristics and
how they are emulated by the Sidecar.
4.1 Display Modes
The PC has two standard display modes: Monochrome and Color
Display. Both of these display modes are available on the
Sidecar by using the PC Mono and PC Color Display programs.
Running one of these programs is similar to turning on a video
monitor attached to the PC, except that the PC requires a
separate monitor for each mode while the Sidecar requires only
one monitor. The Amiga conveniently creates windows and
screens which allow multiple display types (such as the IBM-PC
display types) to appear on a single monitor.
The IBM-PC Monochrome mode normally displays only one
color (green) on a dark background. Programs can display an
intensified version of the one color, and can also reverse the
color with the background so that dark characters appear on a
color background.
The Sidecar Monochrome display emulates this mode without
these chromatic restrictions. In the Sidecar Monochrome mode,
the color of the text, the intensified text and the background
are independent of each other, and you are able to modify these
colors in any way you choose by selecting the CO OR menu
option (see the MENUS section). Normally the text of the
Monochrome display appears in a window on the Workbench
screen, although the Monochrome display window will move to
its own screen if you choose to use fewer colors than the
normal 4 colors of the text display.
In the IBM-PC Color Display mode, both text and graphics can
be displayed. Text can be rendered in up to 16 colors, and
graphics can be up to 4 colors. The various Color display modes
of the PC are generally incompatible with the display
8

characteristics of the Amiga Workbench screen, so a new screen
is created for the Sidecar Color display. You can modify the
colors of the Sidecar Color display windows to any colors that
suit you by selecting the CO OR menu option (see the MENUS
section).
IBM-PC applications will require either the Monochrome or
Color display modes. Some programs may support both. The
documentation provided with the application will tell you what
display it will use. You should activate the appropriate Sidecar
display program to create the required display, in the same way
that you would turn on a PC video monitor to interact with the
application.
The only PC display characteristic that’s not supported by this
release of the Sidecar is the blinking of text. Extremely few
IBM-PC software packages use the blink characteristic, because
it is widely regarded as distracting and hard on the eyes. It was
left out of the Sidecar display programs in order to improve the
performance of text rendering.
4.2 Keyboard
You send input to your IBM-PC programs through the Amiga
keyboard. You simply activate any of the Sidecar display
windows by clicking on it, and then you type as normal.
For installing the national keyboard driver you have to load the
appropriate driver from your Sidecar System disk. There are
four keys on the PC keyboard that aren’t on the Amiga
keyboard. However, by typing certain control sequences you are
able to send these key sequences to PC programs running on the
Sidecar. The following table lists the PC keys and the Sidecar
translations. Notice that the translations are mnemonic to help
you remember them.
9

PC KEY SIDECAR EQUIVA ENT
Num lock
Scroll ock
Ptr Sc *
+ on Keypad
Right AMIGA and N
Right AMIGA and S, or
Right AMIGA and HE P Key
Right AMIGA and P
Right AMIGA and +
You can view a copy of this list by selecting the convenient
INFO menu option. See the "MENU" section for details.
4.3 Parallel Port
Some IBM-PC applications running on the Sidecar will be able
to print via a printer attached to the Amiga parallel port.
On your Sidecar Workbench disk you will find an icon that
looks like a printer sitting atop an IBM-PC. The icon is named
" PT1" (which is the IBM-PC acronym for " ine Printer 1").
This icon represents the ability to assign the Amiga parallel port
to the Sidecar. The Sidecar can then use the Amiga parallel port
as an IBM printer port, which is the most common use of the
IBM-PC’s parallel port.
Before you can use the Amiga parallel port from the Sidecar,
you have to dedicate the parallel port exclusively to the Sidecar.
This is because only one application at a time can have access
to the Amiga parallel port. When any application is using the
Amiga parallel port, no other application is able to use it.
When you double-click on the PT1 icon, a program runs
which attempts to obtain the parallel port for Sidecar usage. It
is successful only if the parallel port is not currently in use. If
the parallel port is in use by some other system software, you
will receive an error message and the Sidecar will not be able to
print via the Amiga parallel port.
10

If the PT1 program is able to get the parallel port for the
Sidecar, the PT1 program puts up a small title bar on the
Workbench screen with the words
"Parallel Port allocated to Sidecar LPT1."
Note that when the parallel port is in use by the Sidecar, it is
not available to Amiga programs.
You release the parallel port from the exclusive use of the
Sidecar by hitting the close gadget of the title bar. After you do
this, the Sidecar will no longer be able to access the Amiga
parallel port.
Because of limitations in the Sidecar system, using the Amiga
parallel port as an IBM-PC printer port will work only for
certain applications on the Sidecar. There is no convenient way
to describe which print applications will work and which won’t.
You will have to use trial and error to discover if a given
application will work.
The reason for this is technical: PT1 on the Sidecar side works
only for applications that use interrupt handshaking.Print
routines that use busy-wait loops (like the routine that runs
when the user hits the "Prt Sc" key) will not work dependably.
11

5. The PC display windows
This section describes the characteristics and capabilities of the
Sidecar display windows.
5.1 Borders
The "border" of a window is the area around the perimeter of
the window. The border contains the "gadgets" you use to size
and position your window.
You can choose to have the; window borders be visible or
hidden. When, the window borders are visible, you can use the
window gadgets as usual. When the borders are hidden, you can
see all 80 columns and 25 lines of the Amiga display. You can
always use the menus whether or not the borders are visible.
You can make the borders of your display window appear and
disappear by double-clicking in the window. Alternatively you
can use the BORDER menu option to make the borders come
and go.
When you size the window to fill the entire screen, the window
borders vanish automatically. ikewise, when you select the
FU SIZE menu option, the borders vanish automatically
after the window is enlarged to the full size of the screen. If
you select the SMA SIZE menu option the borders reappear
automatically.
5.2 Size of the Window
You can enlarge the window to the full size of the screen
automatically by selecting the FU SIZE menu option. The
window will revert to its small size when you select the SMA
SIZE option.
12

When the window is the full size of the display, and the borders
are hidden, the full 80-column by 25-line dimensions of IBM-
PC text will be displayed.
5.3 Number of Text Colors
Normally, PC Monochrome text can appear in up to 4 colors.
PC Color text can appear in up to 16 colors. The Sidecar display
emulator will create all of these colors for you. However,
because of restrictions in the Amiga hardware, the more text
colors you use, the harder the Amiga must work and the longer
it takes for your text to be displayed. Fortunately, you can use
fewer colors if you wish to have better performance and are
willing to sacrifice some of the colors. Sidecar lets you choose.
Using all of the text colors both slows the text display and
slows the performance of other programs running on the Amiga.
However, if you use fewer text colors, the Amiga will be able
to work much more efficiently.
There are menu options available to let you choose how many
colors of text you want to have displayed. These options let
you choose to have 2, 4, 8, or 16 colors in Color display, and 2
or 4 colors in the Monochrome display.
The performance improvement from 16-color to 8-color text is
significant.
Note that these options are for text only; they have no effect on
the color graphics display, which is always 2 or 4 colors,
depending on the display type created by a particular
application.
13

5.4 Changing Colors
You can change any of the colors of your display window by
selecting the CO OR menu option.
When you select this option, a special color requester appears.
This requester has these features:
In the lower-right there are rectangles of color. Each of these
rectangles represents one of the colors of the display. By
selecting one of these rectangles you choose to work with a
particular color.
You select a color rectangle by moving the pointer over that
color and then clicking the left mouse button once. The color
that you have selected fills the box at the top left of the
requester. After you have selected a color, you can modify it by
using the sliders at the top right of the requester. A color slider
is a wide box with a small rectangle inside it. There are three
sliders, one for each of the three components of Amiga color:
red, green, and blue. The sliders are labelled with the initials
"R", "G", and "B" to indicate which slider controls which color
component. Whenever you select a color, these sliders are
changed to reflect the amount of red, green and blue currently
in the color you’ve chosen.
You adjust a slider by moving the pointer over the slider’s
"knob" (the small rectangle inside the wide box), pressing down
the left button and holding the button down while moving the
mouse left or right. If you move the knob to the left, less of
that color component will be added to the color. If you move
the knob to the right, more of the component will be added to
the color. For instance, if you select the knob of the "R" slider
and slide the knob all the way to the left, there will be no red
in the current color. If you slide it all the way to the right, the
color will have as much red as it can. You can control the green
and blue color components in the same way.
14

If you want to copy the color you’re currently using, select the
COPY-gadget at the lower right of the requester and then select
the color rectangle where you want the current color to be
copied.
The RANGE-gadget allows you to create a range of smoothly-
shaded colors. The colors that you create will range from a
starting to an ending color that you choose. The starting and
ending colors are known as the "endpoints."
To make a range, you select the RANGE- gadget, and then pick
the two colors that you want for the endpoints of the range.
The colors between your endpoints will then be filled in
automatically.
Note that if you pick starting and ending colors that are very
different, the range will not be as smooth as if you pick colors
that are similar.
If you decide that you don’t like the changes you’ve made, you
can select the CANCE -gadget. This will close the color
requester and restore the original colors.
If you are satisfied with the current colors, select the OK-
gadget. The color requester will close and then you can use your
display window with the new colors.
5.5 Multiple Windows
You can open multiple windows in any display mode. This
allows you to mimic the display of multitasking applications.
When you have multiple windows of a display, you can freeze
the contents of any window simply by selecting another window
15

of that display type. You open another window by selecting the
menu option OPEN ANOTHER WINDOW.
Here’s an example of this powerful feature: Suppose you want
to write a letter using information from your spread-sheet. If
you have opened two display windows, you can make certain
information visible in one window and then select the other
window, which freezes the display in the first window. If you
then exit the spread-sheet and open the text editor, you can
compose the letter while referring to the spreadsheet
information still visible in the other window.
Here’s another example: Software developers can do their
compilations in one window, and freeze the error messages
(well, nobody is perfect) in that window by selecting a second
window to re-edit the file, referring back to the first window
for the error information.
5.6 Display Priority
This section is somewhat technical and may be ignored if you
choose.
All of the Amiga programs run at a certain "priority." The
Sidecar display task runs at the normal priority, which is
priority of 0 when started from the Workbench and -5 when
started from the C I. When the PC display is changing a lot,
the Sidecar display emulator will try to consume a lot of the
system time and resources. If the display program runs at a
lower priority than other tasks in the Amiga, the display will be
rendered unevenly. If the priority of the display program is too
high, then the other tasks will be held up and will run poorly.
You can change the priority of the display program to suit your
needs. Trial and error will help you decide on the best setting.
16

6.Pulldown Menus of the PC-Windows
The individual menu options displayed in the Sidecar window
are described briefly. They apply to both display modes and are
activated by the right-hand mouse button. Slide the cursor
down to the desired functions and press the command (left)
button simulaneously or simply release the right-hand button to
make your selection.
PROJECT MENU
SAVE SETTINGS
After you have configured the display to your liking (by
various color selections), this command sets up an initialization
file on the Sidecar system diskette so that during the boot
process your selected display colors are always used.
RESTORE SETTINGS
This restores the colour display to original settings. The display
file is simultaneously deleted from the system disk.
INFO
This provides an additional window giving brief information
and help in English.
CLOSE
Selecting this option is the same as selecting the window-close
gadget in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, i.e. it closes
a Sidecar window.
17

DISPLAY MENU
SIZE
FULL SIZE
The current active window is sized to 80 columns by 25 lines.
The borders, if visible, become hidden automatically.
SMALL SIZE
This option will restore the window to its last less-than-full size
dimensions and location.
BORDER
SHOW
HIDE
These menu options allow the display window border to be
shown or hidden. (The same effect can be achieved simply by
double-clicking on the left hand mouse button with the pointer
within the PC window.)
COLOR
With this option you can set the colour of any display screen.
These colours are saved when you use the SAVE SETTINGS
option.
SET CURSOR BLINK RATE
1/2
1
2
4
You can choose how many times per second the cursor will
blink.
18