rmbrowngr wrote: ↑Sat Jan 08, 2022 6:38 pm
Very interesting and informative video for the 186 co-processor and DOS. I always wonder how it worked and its compatibility.
https://youtu.be/hWwRLRQ8NIw
Seems that there was no sound card emulation. No sure that there was any pc speaker support either.
Did anyone actually use it instead of a PC? Was there a competitive price incentive to buy a Master with co-processor instead of a PC?
I'm not going to be able to answer on behalf of anyone who had one, but the Acorn User review wasn't exactly enthusiastic, and that from an author/publisher who may have had one or more books out covering the Master 512:
"Master meets IBM - or does it?", Acorn User, September 1986.
The price of the co-processor went down substantially over time, ending up as low as £99. At that price, there was a bit more enthusiasm:
"DOS Solutions", Acorn User, May 1989.
It seems that expectations of DOS-based machines at that time, at least for Beeb users, were largely based on the possibilities of running the generally more capable application packages for the PC platform on the computer they already had. Thus, gaming or entertainment (for instance) doesn't really seem to be a focus, and the graphical capabilities of the Master series lagged contemporary PCs, which had already been a concern with the Torch Graduate:
"Torch Graduate", Personal Computer World, June 1985.
(When the Graduate came out, PCs were still quite expensive, hence the positive remarks about the pricing in the above review. Clearly, things changed rapidly and, from a competitive perspective, almost completely in the following year or so.)
I made the point in another thread that Acorn would have made the Master more competitive if they had evolved the video ULA, supporting 4 colours in mode 0, 16 colours in mode 1, and maybe 256 colours in mode 2, although just having improved palette support would have been reasonable in the latter case. That would have made it broadly competitive with the Atari ST and contemporary PCs. I guess Acorn had a bunch of video ULAs in stock and weren't interested in designing a new version, anyway. Plus, the Archimedes came out the next year. To be fair to Acorn, though, I remember using RM Nimbus 286 machines which were not fully PC compatible out of the box, needing additional graphics emulator software to run mainstream programs, and the graphical performance was rather poor.
As for the sound support, one would have thought that the Beeb's SN76489 chip would have been ideal to support some PC titles since it was used in the PCjr and the Tandy 1000, but reviews don't seem to mention it. Maybe someone did a driver at some point: there does seem to have been a community or scene around the Master 512 coprocessor.
I find these PC compatibility products rather interesting. Acorn seemed to acknowledge the importance of the PC platform, even seeking to launch expensive business computer products (the ABC300 series) emphasising GEM and DOS, before settling on a strategy that only ever offered products that were more like accessories for their existing range than competitive products in the broader marketplace. This continued even through the 32-bit era despite all the promise supposedly brought by the Risc PC's coprocessor card functionality.
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