Emulation On The Amiga - MS-DOS On Amiga Via Sidecar or Bridgeboard

MS-DOS On Amiga Via Sidecar or Bridgeboard

MS-DOS compatibility was a major issue during the early years of the Amiga's lifespan in order to promote the machine as a serious business machine. In order to run the MS-DOS operating system, Commodore released the Sidecar for the Amiga 1000, basically a 8088 board in a closed case that connected to the side of the Amiga. Clever programming (a library named Janus, after the two-faced Roman god of doorways) made it possible to run PC software in an Amiga window without use of emulation. At the introduction of the Sidecar the crowd was stunned to see the MS-DOS version of Microsoft Flight Simulator running at full speed in an Amiga window on the Workbench.

Later the Sidecar was implemented on an expansion card named "Bridgeboard" for Amiga 2000+ models. Bridgeboard cards appeared up to 486 processor variants. The Bridgeboard card and the Janus library made the use of PC expansion cards and harddisk/floppydisk drives possible. The bridgeboard card was manufactured by Commodore, later third party cards also appeared for the Amiga 500 and Amiga 600 expansion slot such as the KCS Powerboard.

Eventually, full-software emulators, such as PC-Task and PCx allowed Amigas to run MS-DOS programs, including Microsoft Windows, without additional hardware, at the costs of speed and compatibility.