Fresh Fish 8/FreshFishVol8-CD1.bin/useful/reviews/hardware/emulation/emplant_2

Text File | 1993-04-04 | 52KB | 897 lines

Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet
From: [e-mail] (John Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Emplant (and comparison with AMax II)
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.emulations
Date: 4 Apr 1993 18:11:50 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
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Keywords: hardware, emulator, Macintosh, commercial


    This is a general review of the product EMPLANT, and a comparison
between EMPLANT and AMax II.  Both products emulate an Apple Macintosh
personal computer using the Amiga.

CONTENTS

- Product Information
- Introduction
- The EMPLANT Product
- Warranty
- Documentation
- Sybil
- Installing EMPLANT
- EMPLANT in Operation
- EMPLANT Problems
- Customer Support
- Comparison of EMPLANT and AMax II
- Personal Opinions and Recommendations
- Utilities Unlimited


PRODUCT INFORMATION

            EMPLANT - Version 2.1
Manufactured by:
Utilities Unlimited
1641 McCulloch Blvd. Suite #25-124
Lake Havasu City, AZ 86403
[phone]
[phone] FAX
[phone] BBS
Internet - [e-mail]
Basic EMPLANT price                 $279.95 US Dollars
with either serial or SCSI option         $349.95
with both serial and SCSI             $399.95
Sybil - required to read 800K Mac disks          $99.95
256K Mac IIx ROMs (version 1.3 required)     $260.00 (approximately)

            AMax II - Version 2.51
Manufactured by:
Readysoft
30 Wertheim Court, Unit 2
Richmond Hill, Ont.
Canada L4B 1B9
[phone]
[phone] FAX
AMax II (Apple floppy drive required to read Mac disks) $249.95 US Dollars
AMax II+ with serial, and 800K Mac compatibility    $499.95
                               ($360 street price)
Requires 128K Mac Plus ROMs, not included


INTRODUCTION

    Any time someone says that a particular feat is impossible, and then
someone else claims that he has accomplished this same feat, it is bound to
create quite a stir.  Such has been the case, in epic proportions, with the
product EMPLANT.  Macintosh emulation is not new to the Amiga.  AMax has been
available for many years and continues to be improved.  However, it emulates
a black and white Mac only, and is not a multitasking application.  In
particular, multitasking Macintosh and Amiga programs at the same time was
the feat that many people, including the AMax designers, said was completely
impossible.

    I needed a Macintosh to run a real time analysis program for stock
and commodity prices that I receive via satellite.  There simply is no such
program available for the Amiga.  I had been running this application using
AMax, and thus my computer was unavailable to me any time I was monitoring
the markets.  Hearing that EMPLANT could offer me multitasking access to the
Amiga, plus run my Mac programs in color at the same time, was truly exciting
news.

    Deciding to order the product was not quite so simple though.  With
so many people claiming the feat was impossible, claiming that EMPLANT did
not and would never exist, and attacking the credibility of the company and
designers of the EMPLANT project, it was a shaky decision indeed.  The
turning point came at a World of Commodore show when I got a chance to meet
Jim Drew, one of the designers of EMPLANT.  I was immediately reminded of
what computer programmers used to be like at the birth of the personal
computer revolution in the early 1980's -- unbridled enthusiasm, goals
without bounds, the desire to embrace 'impossible' tasks, and the cleverness
to succeed in them.  Instead of hiding his secret, he openly told everyone
how he got multitasking to work.  It was a very simple trick.  Much like the
ones that leave you saying, "I should have thought of that."  But you have
to admit that you didn't.  Between that, and a pre-order discounted price,
the decision to order EMPLANT became much easier.

THE EMPLANT PRODUCT

    EMPLANT is billed as a general purpose emulation board.  Currently,
the only emulation supported is for the Apple Macintosh IIx.  In the future,
however, there should be emulation modules available for other computers.
It is likely that they will develop emulations for IBM and Atari ST
computers -- IBM because it is important, and Atari because it would be easy
to do.  It is also possible that someday, emulations could be available for
more unusual machines or even game consoles like Sega or Nintendo.  Future
possibilities are probably limited only by the amount of available
programming time, and whether a product would have a large enough market to
justify the development expense.  The hardware itself is set up to allow
future expansion.  EMPLANT has a ROM SIMM socket that while currently only
used to read the ROMs from a Mac II, could also be used to add additional
hardware to the board.  (The ROMs are copied to a disk file, and do not
remain on the board -- thus the socket is free.)  The socket can address,
though programmable logic on the board, any of the signals on the Zorro II
bus.  This kind of expandability could have some terrific possibilities for
the future.  One expansion already being considered is a board with an 80386
or '486 processor for the IBM emulation module.  Unless Utilities Unlimited
is using outside developers though, I wouldn't expect any new emulation
modules very soon.  The two programmers they have are busy enough just
getting the Mac II emulation finished.

    The EMPLANT hardware is a Zorro II plug-in card.  While it can
physically be installed in any Amiga supporting Zorro card slots, the
Mac IIx emulator software requires a 68020 or better CPU.  Thus if you have
an A2000, or A500 with a Zorro II expansion device, you will also need a
processor accelerator board in order to run the Mac IIx emulator.  It is
highly recommended that your accelerator contains an MMU for best speed and
compatibility.  Accelerator boards that contain a 68EC030 (the EC is
considered 'economy') do not contain an MMU.

    A PCMCIA slot version of EMPLANT that will work on the A1200 is
scheduled to be released in the summer of 1993.

    Up to now, EMPLANT has run under OS 1.3, but it has just been
announced that future versions will require 2.04 or better.  It runs fine
under OS 2.04, 2.1, and 3.0, is compatible with the A500, A2000, A3000 and
A4000, and requires at least 2 MB of Fast RAM.  Personally, I believe 4 MB
should be the minimum configuration, and would be required if you want to run
System 7 for the Mac.  A portion of memory must be reserved for Mac emulation,
and this memory becomes inaccessible to the Amiga side, even if the memory
is not actually in use.  So if you want to multitask Amiga programs along with
the Mac, I recommend 8 MB of Fast RAM and 1 MB of Chip RAM as a good start.
Another way to look at it is to have an extra 4 MB over what you would
normally require for Amiga work, since that 4 MB will be used by the Mac
emulation.

    The EMPLANT board contains an audio digitizer, or at least would have
contained an audio digitizer if two empty sockets on the board had chips in
them.  There is no software right now to access the digitizer, but
apparently it is built into the operating system software of the Mac IIsi.
This emulation module is under development, and should support the digitizer
when finished.  The scheduled release for this is the summer of 1993.
Utilities Unlimited has already made the part numbers of the missing chips
public, and they are inexpensive and easily obtainable.

    For an additional cost, the board can be ordered with two serial
ports with the same connectors as a real Mac II.  Software is included to
access these ports from both Mac and Amiga programs.  Reportedly, the serial
hardware is identical to a real Mac's, and memory addressing schemes are used
so that even programs that write directly to the serial hardware will work
correctly under EMPLANT.  AppleTalk is supposed to be supported through
these ports, but I have not personally tested this.  An Amiga device driver
is included to access the serial ports, but it does not support RTS/CTS
handshaking, so it will not work well with high spe