DOS emulation on a SPARC Station 1+

Tom Yager decvax!maxx!tyager at decpa.pa.dec.com
Sun Dec 9 09:07:00 AEST 1990


In article <603 at brchh104.bnr.ca>, millman at jade.sbi.com (Phillip Millman) writes:
> I have a SPARCstation 1 with 16 Meg Ram.  I would like to run DOS
> applications (Actually my boss requires it.) on the SUN.  I have heard
> however that the standard dos emulator runs at 8088 speeds (4.77 MHz or
> SLOWER).  Is there anything out there that would run a DOS apllication at
> more acceptable speeds??

Try giving Puzzle Systems Corp. a call. They offer a product called
Synergy 386 for SBus-based SPARC systems. This is a single-width SBus card
which holds a 20MHz 386 processor, static RAM cache, and support hardware.
It runs in memory stolen from the Sun, and can even run applications in
(get this!) 286 and 386 protected mode. It runs Windows 3 in 386 enhanced
mode, according to the vendor.

A spokesman for the company claims that speed, because of the overhead of
talking to Sun memory, is about equal to a 16MHz 80386sx. That's
respectable. The product also has a VGA chip on board to provide faithful
hardware support for PC graphics standards from MDA through super VGA
(with a maximum of 64 colors). It displays the PC application in a SunView
window; Open Windows is coming soon.

This sounds like an interesting product. Puzzle Systems is in California,
and can be reached at (408) 779-9909.  (ty)

+--Tom Yager, Technical Editor, BYTE----Freelance writer-------------------+
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