It supported high Density floppies and CD-ROM if the Amiga hardware had mounted those devices. The emulator could make use of hardfile devices and then it could handle multiple hard disk files and hard disk partitions. The latest version of it (4.4) was capable to emulate an 80386 clocked at 12 MHz and features include support for up to 16 MiB RAM (15 MB extended) under MS-DOS, up to two floppy drives and 2 hard drives. PCTask is a software PC emulator emulating PC Intel hardware with 8088 processor and CGA graphic modes. In addition, it would only run on Amigas using the 68000 microprocessor, and would not run if the Amiga had more than 512K of RAM. The application, called Transformer, was indeed extremely slow The 'Landmark' benchmark rated it as a 300 kHz 286, far slower than the 4.7 MHz of IBM's oldest and slowest PC. Some who attended the demonstration were skeptical that the emulator, while impressive technically, could run with acceptable performance. The company demonstrated the emulator by booting IBM PC DOS and running Lotus 1-2-3. When Commodore introduced the Amiga 1000 in July 1985 it also unexpectedly announced a software-based IBM PC emulator for it. 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.Įventually, 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. The Bridgeboard card and the Janus library made the use of PC expansion cards and harddisk/floppydisk drives possible. Bridgeboard cards appeared up to 486 processor variants.

Later the Sidecar was implemented on an expansion card named ' Bridgeboard' for Amiga 2000+ models. 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.

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. In order to run the MS-DOS operating system, Commodore released the Sidecar for the Amiga 1000, basically an 8088 board in a closed case that connected to the side of the Amiga. 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. MS-DOS on Amiga via Sidecar or Bridgeboard 1 MS-DOS on Amiga via Sidecar or Bridgeboard.

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