Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: jharris@cup.portal.com (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 Lines: 881 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <1pn8d6$s1e@menudo.uh.edu> Reply-To: jharris@cup.portal.com (John Harris) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu 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 (602) 680-9004 (602) 680-9006 FAX (602) 453-9767 BBS Internet - jdrew@cryo.rain.com 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 (416) 731-4175 (416) 764-8867 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 speed or error correcting modems. Fortunately, RTS/CTS does work from the Mac II emulation, and I hope a new Amiga device driver will be written to support it as well. Also for an additional cost, the board can be ordered with a non-DMA SCSI controller. The SCSI port is accessible from the Mac emulation; but at this time, no software is available to access the SCSI port from AmigaDOS. If your Amiga already contains a SCSI controller, EMPLANT can already address Mac SCSI peripherals through the Amiga controller, and thus you do not need to order the SCSI option with EMPLANT. A future option being considered is an adapter that will let you plug in and use NuBus cards, the Mac equivalent of Amiga Zorro cards. WARRANTY The EMPLANT hardware is covered by lifetime warranty against defects in workmanship, parts, and labor. In my unit, the serial chip was defective, and Utilities Unlimited mailed a replacement chip free of charge. Most of the early units had these defective chips, and any users that ordered the serial ports should examine the serial chip on their board. It is the part number 8530, the large chip by the serial ports. If this chip has an 'ST' marked on it (the chip manufacturer), then you should contact U.U. to get a replacement. DOCUMENTATION Well, there's not much here -- a 12-page, photocopied pamphlet that was of no help in the beginning when I could not get EMPLANT to work. Of course, in the beginning, no one I know could get EMPLANT to work at all, and the poor manual was just an extra source of frustration. It took multiple software updates before the product was even operational. Because of this, it is difficult to judge how objectionable the manual would be for a new user today. EMPLANT now works on most accelerated hardware, the program has far fewer problems, and the software diskette does contain help information about the installation. The manual at least describes the operation of the program and may be sufficient for today's new users to get the product working. The manual has been called preliminary, and more complete documentation is promised for the future. Completely absent from the documentation are any hints on how to use the Macintosh operating system. While it might not be possible to include the owner's manuals from a real Mac, some general guidelines for using this new and alien environment would be very helpful. If you are not familiar with the Mac, I suggest that you find a book on using the Macintosh in order to get the most out of the Mac experience. I found the book, "Macintosh System 7: Everything You Need to Know" a good choice, and it even comes with a disk full of helpful utilities. It is made for users that are going to run System 7; but if you have enough RAM, I highly recommend that you do so. SYBIL - The device for reading 800K Mac disks Sybil consists of two pass-through connectors which contain all of its electronics. One of these plugs into the RGB monitor port, and the other plugs into the parallel port. There are connectors on the backs of the Sybil pass-throughs where the monitor and printer can be plugged in. Because the Sybil connectors are different lengths, on the A3000 there is a clearance problem between my DCTV unit (plugged into the monitor port) and my printer cable. The monitor connector for DCTV has a cable branching off from it, on the side next to the printer port. Because Sybil extends the printer port further out than the monitor port, the printer connection is now right where the branched off cable goes, and there is not enough room to plug in the cable without stressing the connectors. With normal monitor and printer cables, there would not be a problem. However, the device would have been better engineered if both connectors were the same length, preserving the relationship that exists on the back of the computer. Sybil operates by changing the clock speed of the Amiga's custom chips to match the different data rates of Mac formatted disks. A side effect of this technique is that the video display becomes very distorted whenever Sybil is being used. Thus, it is not very useful for reading and writing Mac floppy disks within the emulation. It is best to just convert the entire disk to EMPLANT or AMax format, and then use this disk with the emulator. Some processor accelerator boards, video boards, and genlocks may be incompatible with Sybil, and have to be disabled for Sybil to work properly. Sybil will not work at all with Commodore's new High Density drives, because of changes in the drive electronics. Currently, Sybil cannot write to Mac format disks -- only read operations are supported. The writing operation is being worked on now, and should be operational in the middle of April, 1993. Writing Mac disks reliably will require writing a full track at one time. Even though it is not available yet, I believe that it will work correctly, because I have successfully been able to create a blank Mac formatted disk. The formatting routine did use a full track write: it's just that I couldn't put any information on the disk because the data routines were sector oriented. The full track read routines were recently completed, and writing is next on the list. Sybil contains a slide switch that can disable the unit when not in use. It should normally be left in the off position when not reading Mac disks. Sybil also contains a screwdriver adjusted trim pot used for calibrating the unit. New software updates are supposed to function without requiring the calibration step, and this would be a nice improvement. As with EMPLANT, Sybil suffers from very inadequate documentation. I received no printed manual at all, and the text files on the disk were again of no help when the product didn't work for me. I ultimately discovered two things. Sybil does not work if you have a printer connected to your computer, but turned off. And, the calibrate program for adjusting Sybil simply doesn't work at all on most computers. U.U. now recommends bypassing that step and going directly to the disk converter software, simply adjusting the unit until it reads a Mac disk. With those problems solved, it was actually very easy to just run the converter program, insert a Mac disk, and adjust Sybil so that it reads the disk. I haven't had to change the adjustment since, and I have read quite a few Mac disks with no trouble. I just have to remember to turn the printer on before using it. It is also best to turn the printer off line, otherwise it may print and eject paper while Sybil is being used. At this point, you may be thinking that Sybil is a very quirky way to read Mac disks. I can assure you that both AMax II+ and Spectre GCR (the Mac emulator for the Atari ST computer) have had a lot of reported problems also. The Mac's variable speed drive is not easily duplicated. One alternative is to hook up a real Apple Macintosh disk drive using either the original AMax II cartridge, the product Mac-2-DOS, or a do-it-yourself hack. The current version of EMPLANT's software does not support this alternative, but it should be included in the near future. One other possibility, depending on your application, would be to get a high density drive for your Amiga. This will let you read and write both Mac and IBM 1.44M High Density disks, plus give you HD support for your Amiga. All newer Macs have HD compatible drives, so if you have access to a real Mac that can convert any 800K disks you run across into high density, you may be better off just getting a high density drive. If you want to have full compatibility with both 800K and Mac HD disks, you will need to have both original and HD drives. Again, Sybil does not work with HD drives, so you will need an original drive to use it with. I have been told that AMax II+ also cannot read 800K Mac disks on HD drives. INSTALLING EMPLANT Installing the EMPLANT software on your hard drive requires manually copying files from the disk, manually inserting a line at the beginning of your Startup-Sequence, and setting up a lot of configurations in the EMPLANT program's menus. If it weren't for the help file now distributed on the disk, I think many users would be unable to get it set up properly. EMPLANT will not even run from the distribution disk without all the manual configuring. I hope this is addressed in the future by supplying a hard drive installation program and a default configuration setup. Fortunately, once the configuration has been set up and saved, the Mac IIx software allows you to go directly into the emulation by double-clicking a single icon. The Mac IIx emulation requires the ROM operating system from a real Mac II. You may either plug the appropriate ROMs into the EMPLANT board, or run a supplied program on a real Mac II that copies the ROMs to a disk file. In the case of plug-in ROMs, the software will copy them to a disk file anyway, and then the ROMs must be removed. In both cases the emulation runs from a disk file of the ROM image. ROMs for the Mac IIx emulation must be the 256K type, and they must be version 1.3. One way I know to tell the correct version is they must have support for an Apple 'Superdrive'. These are harder to obtain than the 128K ROMs that AMax uses. Computer stores are not supposed to sell ROMs without taking old (and presumably defective) ROMs in their place. There are some places that sell them though, and if you can find them, they will probably cost around $260 US Dollars. Utilities Unlimited should be able to provide you with a current source for obtaining them. Before buying EMPLANT, you should make sure you can get the ROMs or a disk file of them. Copyright laws require that you own the ROMs or the computer that the ROM image came from, and also require that only one copy of the ROM code is being used at the same time. The emulation also requires the Mac System software on disk. This software is easier to obtain. If you purchase the Sybil hardware for reading 800K Mac format disks, you can get Mac disks from a computer store or Mac user's group, and convert the disks using Sybil. I have verified that this conversion works without any problems. If you have a high density drive, system disks can be obtained on HD disks which EMPLANT can read directly. (I have found System 7 to be more commonly available in HD format.) Otherwise, if you can find a user who has AMax, he should be able to supply you with System disks in AMax format, which EMPLANT can read directly with standard Amiga drives. EMPLANT can be configured in many different ways, such as how much memory to use, which floppy drives, serial and parallel devices, task priorities for both active and inactive states, and more. Part of the EMPLANT configuration is setting up the storage devices that the Mac emulation can access. These can be any mounted Amiga device that contain an environment record, including hard drives, CD-ROM, flopticals, and even Amiga RAMdisks. EMPLANT IN OPERATION I have used EMPLANT with three different models of the Amiga. The first machine on which I succeeded in running EMPLANT (first public announcement on both Usenet and GEnie of a working EMPLANT) was an A2000 with A2630 accelerator, 8 MB Fast RAM and 1 MB Chip RAM, a GVP hard drive, and Amiga OS 2.04. This was a friend's computer however, and I did not spend much time with it. A couple of software updates later, EMPLANT ran on my A3000, and the testing results and opinions in this review are all based upon this machine. It is configured as follows: 25 MHz A3000 with 12 MB Fast RAM, and 2 MB Chip RAM. Original 52 MB hard drive. Kickstart 2.04 (loaded from disk), and Workbench 2.1. Recently, I was able to test EMPLANT in a stock A4000/040, and it ran very well. There will be some A4000 specific comments later on where appropriate. As mentioned before, once EMPLANT is set up, running it is as simple as double-clicking its icon. The Mac II emulation runs on its own screen. There is no 'click to back' gadget, but the Amiga-M keypress will cycle the screen to the back, and the screen can also be dragged. (Dragging requires using the mouse+keystroke combination you have set with Prefs/IControl, which by default is holding the left Amiga key down and dragging the mouse -- there is no Amiga system pointer visible on the Mac II screen.) This operation will invoke some neat comments when shown to real Mac users! One really handy feature of EMPLANT is that either the left or right mouse button will be seen as a click of the Mac's single mouse button. AMax reads only the left button, and I always found it clumsy to have to adjust to operating pull down menus with the left button. The Mac II screen can be changed between black-and-white, 4 color, or 16 color modes. There does not seem to be any way to change which colors appear on a 2 color screen. I think you are stuck with black-and-white. Only 640x400 NTSC screens and 640x512 PAL screens are supported right now. Overscan screen support should be provided in the future. If you have an AGA machine, you may also select a 256 color mode, and get a 640x480 display. A 32,000+ color mode using HAM8, DCTV, or other graphics cards has been promised for the future. These modes are selectable from within the emulation, using the standard Mac control panel accessory 'Monitors'. The EMPLANT software also responds automatically to operating system requests to change screen modes, such as when running a program that requests a certain type of screen. Mac II screens use a different memory configuration than the Amiga does, and they actually need to be converted by the EMPLANT software in order to be displayable. The user can set how often this conversion takes place, from 6 frames per second up to 60 FPS. This conversion was very slow in early versions of the software, but is now much faster thanks to a special trick. The video drivers can now use the computer's MMU to determine which areas of the screen, if any, have been written to -- and only those areas will need to be updated. This is an excellent improvement, not only because the screen updates become much faster, but because much less CPU time is stolen from the emulation to do the screen conversions. If there is no screen activity, all of the CPU time is available. If your computer does not contain an MMU, you will not be able to take advantage of these video drivers, and your emulation will run much slower. The A1200 does not contain an MMU, but the PCMCIA EMPLANT is being designed with a hardware assist that will give the same speed benefits. The two and four color screen modes are very fast -- about the same speed as they would be on a real Mac II with an equivalent CPU. The 16 color mode is noticeably slower, but still very usable. Because of the MMU video routines, if only small areas of the screen are being updated, 16 colors can still be quite fast. It only slows down when large areas of the screen need to be changed, and thus a lot of work needs to be done in the conversion process. For example, opening a large window on the screen -- an instantaneous process in 2 or 4 color modes -- takes a quarter of a second or so in the 16 color mode. However, once the window is drawn, the icons will pop up very quickly, almost the same speed as in the 2 and 4 color modes. It all depends on how much screen activity is taking place at once. On the Amiga 4000, the screens did not become sluggish until using the 256 color mode. 256 colors on the A4000 behaves much like 16 colors on the A3000. The 16 color mode used to be very limiting in what operations you could do reliably. Things like high speed serial operations and floppy reads and writes were very unreliable. Recent improvements that made 16 color mode even faster, plus improvements in the floppy disk code, have made the 16 color mode usable in all operations. I am using 16 color mode almost exclusively now and have had no more reliability problems with it. Here are some 32 bit color quickdraw tests, using a Mac benchmarking program Speedometer 3.1 on my A3000. The tests perform a variety of line draws, fills, and scrolls, and I think they are a pretty good indication of real world performance. Speeds are relative to a Mac II (16MHz 68020). EMPLANT 2 Color 1.57 EMPLANT 4 Color 1.21 EMPLANT 16 Color .69 As you can see, the 2 and 4 color modes zip along pretty well. Keeping in mind the 16 color rating is achieved with a 25MHz 68030 processor, it still means that EMPLANT is achieving near 50% efficiency in 16 color display speed against a real Mac, and I think that is pretty amazing considering that all the screen data has to be converted to Amiga format on the fly. The 2 and 4 color modes are always available if you want the extra speed. Virtually every time I use EMPLANT, I am multitasking Amiga programs with it. The nature of the Mac stock analysis program I use requires it to be running the entire business day. It has been a thrill to not lose access to my Amiga during this time. While EMPLANT is running in the background, I have done word processing, desktop publishing, 38.4K telecommunications, games, and more. I have run everything short of games that take over the system, and so far, everything has coexisted peacefully. EMPLANT is running at a -1 priority when its screen is not active, and this lets me run my Amiga applications with no noticeable loss of performance. The serial interrupts that collect the stock data still function at a higher priority, and so I don't lose any data. I have diagnostics on both the Mac program, and the stock data unit itself, that verify no data loss is occurring. The multitasking does not work quite as well when the EMPLANT screen is active, and Amiga programs are running in the background. The Mac operating system does not know that someone else might be able to use spare CPU time while waiting for keypresses or other events, and so it will chew up time in 'busy loops'. Plus the Mac is nowhere near as efficient at multitasking as the Amiga is anyway. This means that background Amiga programs will have to fight for CPU time when running Mac programs in the foreground. A good example of this occurred when I was printing a document from PageStream while running the Mac stock analysis program. As long as the PageStream screen was active, printing took place at normal speed, and the Mac program happily collected its data. But when I made the EMPLANT screen active, printing speed dropped way down, even though I wasn't doing anything with the Mac program. There is probably little that can be done to improve this situation, unless the Apple System software can somehow be made to use CPU time more efficiently. As long as the Mac wants CPU time, EMPLANT will have to give in to it. It might be possible someday to patch into some of the Mac's waiting routines, and allow them to release free CPU time to the Amiga. This is purely speculation on my part, and for the moment, we will have to work within the limitations. To summarize, Amiga applications multitask very well when they are the active screen -- or more specifically, when they are at a higher priority than the EMPLANT process. When the EMPLANT process is at the same priority as Amiga applications, the multitasking will be a lot less efficient. Any applications at a lower priority than the EMPLANT process will not execute at all. Be aware that if you have any low priority utilities, like a screen blanker, they will not function while EMPLANT is running -- unless you raise their priority to the same level as the EMPLANT process. The next update to the emulation software promises to allow direct reading and writing of AmigaDOS disks from within the Mac emulation. The Amiga drives will appear on the Mac desktop, and can be used in the same manner as Mac formatted drives! Another future update will contain a device driver for the Amiga side, that will let AmigaDOS read and write Mac formatted drives -- basically, the Mac equivalent of CrossDOS. When these features are in place, data can be easily shared between Amiga and Mac programs, effectively making Mac applications almost as convenient and flexible as native Amiga programs. The 'almost' comes from the multitasking limitation described above. These features will be an extremely welcome addition, because there have previously been very few ways to transfer data between Mac and AmigaDOS drives. The best alternative right now would be to use an IBM formatted disk as an intermediate step, since both the Mac and Amiga can be set up to read them. This alternative only became available in the recent 2.1 version of EMPLANT. Before that, about the only choice was to run two telecommunications programs, one Mac and one Amiga, and plug a null modem cable between the EMPLANT board and the Amiga serial port. It was pretty strange running two telecom programs on the same computer to send files to itself -- it was neat to be able to do it, but frustrating that I had to do it to accomplish a simple task. As you can see, the upcoming ability to transfer files between the two operating systems will be a very pleasant feature indeed. I have used the EMPLANT serial ports, both with the stock analysis programs and with the ZTerm telecom program. I made my own serial cable, using the diagram included on the EMPLANT distribution diskette, which supports the RTS/CTS handshaking lines. Commercially available cables may or not be configured for hardware handshaking and should be carefully checked. After replacing the originally defective serial chip on the EMPLANT board (discussed earlier), ZTerm has worked perfectly with my 14.4K modem, using a 38.4K transmission speed. As mentioned before, the serial device driver for the Amiga side does not currently support RTS/CTS, and as such did not work well with my high speed modem. I did connect an older 2400 baud modem, and it worked just fine with the Amiga device driver. EMPLANT does not support Mac serial operations through the Amiga serial port right now, but that feature should be available in a future update. Currently, printing is supported only through one of the serial ports on the EMPLANT board. I have a LaserJet III printer with a PacificPage postscript cartridge and their MacPage printer driver. I tested printing from a variety of different programs; and although it worked OK, it is a lot slower than using the Amiga parallel port. I will be thankful when EMPLANT supports Amiga parallel printing. EMPLANT can read AMax-formatted hard drive partitions, and I already had an AMax partition on my hard drive when I installed EMPLANT. I selected it for use with EMPLANT, and it booted directly from it with no problems at all. Note that for this to happen, the Mac System software must have been installed for all Mac computers. If it was installed for the Mac Plus only, you will have to reinstall the System software. EMPLANT, and for that matter a real Mac II, will not run with Mac Plus System software. EMPLANT can also read AMax formatted floppy disks, in addition to its own disk format. I was told EMPLANT format disks were 880K, just like Amiga disks, but I have yet to see any disks formatted above 800K. I was also told that the EMPLANT format was faster, and it used to be. But with the new track based routines, the formats appear to be the same speed, and so I don't know any more what the difference between EMPLANT and AMax format is supposed to be. If you have a High Density drive, EMPLANT can read HD Mac and IBM formatted disks. 800K Mac formatted disks can be read if you have Sybil. I didn't have a good source for obtaining some of the high power Mac software to test with the emulator. I have heard from other users though, and so far no one has reported that a major piece of software fails to run under EMPLANT. There was a system crash when exiting Microsoft Excel, but that has been corrected. The only failed program I have heard about, outside of my own experiences, is Apple's DiskCopy program. This is a program for creating floppy disks from binary disk image files, (similar to DMS on the Amiga). There are other programs available in the public domain that accomplish the same task, and these do run under EMPLANT. Personally, I have run PageMaker, Microsoft Word, ZTerm telecom software, TickerWatcher and Personal Hotline (stock analysis), and a few dozen PD utilities and games. I have installed System software versions, 6.05, 6.07, 6.08, and 7.01 which have all worked correctly. Most of the failures I have seen were game programs that called sound routines not yet implemented in EMPLANT. Turning the sound off in the game configuration allowed all of these to run. I was not able to test the same programs under AMax, because they all required color. I did not test any, but I would expect most copy-protected games to fail under emulation. In short, I believe EMPLANT has a compatibility level very similar to AMax or any other emulation system. It will never be 100%, but most programs you run across will work without problems. EMPLANT PROBLEMS The Mac IIx that EMPLANT is trying to emulate only has a 68020 CPU with a 24 bit address bus, and the 256K Mac ROMs are not '32 bit clean'. This means that the Mac IIx can access memory only within the 24 bit address space. Amiga machines and accelerator boards that contain a 68030, which is a full 32 bit CPU, will likely have RAM that is outside the 24 bit limitation. Thus, the Mac IIx emulator would normally not be able to use any of this RAM. To get around this problem, EMPLANT must use the MMU to remap the RAM into the lower 24 bit addresses. There are a few problems related to doing this. - First of all, it means your machine *must* have an MMU to run the current version of the Mac IIx emulator. - Virtual memory will not work on a machine that is not 32 bit clean, and thus it does not work with EMPLANT. - The remapping is not 100% efficient, so you will not be able to use all of your available RAM for the Mac emulation. I have 12MB, but can only get a 4.5MB Mac. The available Mac memory for 4MB and 8MB machines is a bit lower; I think it is around 2.5MB and 3.5MB respectively. The upper limit of available RAM is 7.5MB, and you would need a 16MB Amiga to get there. The excess RAM in these conditions isn't wasted -- it's still available to the Amiga -- it just isn't usable for the Mac emulation. - If your Amiga has Kickstart loaded from disk, such as early A3000 models, any time after running EMPLANT, you can not reset your machine with the Ctrl-A-A keys, and will have to do a cold start to reset your computer. The simple way to cure all of these MMU related problems, is to have the emulation '32 bit clean'. Newer model Macintoshes have 68030's and a 512K ROM that is 32 bit clean. Ever since EMPLANT was released, all of us users have been waiting for the emulation to be upgraded to one of these newer machines. The downside of this is that you will need a new set of Mac ROMs -- not very pleasant if you paid $260 for the 256K ROMs already. Utilities Unlimited seems to have come up with a solution though. The next version of the EMPLANT software is supposed to make the emulation 32 bit clean, even when using the 256K ROMs. They say it is already operational, and will be released in the first or second week of April. If this is true, all of these MMU related problems should be solved. It should also allow the emulation to run with the 'EC' version of the 68030, but the screen update speeds will be very slow without the MMU available. I highly recommend that if your accelerator has a 68EC030, you should see if it can be replaced with a full 68030 processor. The built-in clock of the Macintosh operating system runs erratically. Sometimes it will work just fine, but other days it can be as much as 4-8 times faster than normal. None of the floppy drives can be accessed by the Amiga while the Mac emulation is running. The drive icons show up as 'Busy'. If you need to read a floppy, you will need to shut down the emulation. The software to convert disks between Mac, AMax, and EMPLANT formats aborts the copy operation if it encounters a bad sector. Thus, if you have one bad sector on the disk, you will be unable to convert it at all. All of these problems have been discussed with Utilities Unlimited, and all are on the list to fix. One minor annoyance is that EMPLANT will send a few garbage characters to the printer whenever the emulation is started. These are the commands sent through the parallel port to initialize the Sybil unit, but they will also be received by your printer if it is on-line. I am going to suggest that there should be a way to disable this, since I rarely use Sybil within the emulation. If the software can check the Sybil on-off switch, and not send the characters when Sybil is deactivated, that would be the best solution. Otherwise, a menu configuration to enable/disable the use of Sybil would still be an improvement. For the time being, you should keep your printer turned off or off-line if you don't want the garbage characters printed. UTILITIES UNLIMITED CUSTOMER SUPPORT I have contacted customer support several times, and they have always tried to be very helpful. Sometimes it has been difficult to get through because of busy phone lines, and technical support is available only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but they will help out with whatever difficulties you are experiencing. I never felt like they were in a rush to get me off the phone. I sent them the few non-working Mac programs that I have encountered, and they examined all of them to find out what makes them fail. Some programs failed for reasons that could be fixed in the emulation system, others failed because of the lack of sound support (and these should work properly once the sound routines are finished), and some were found to write directly to the Mac hardware in ways the emulation can't handle. I was very pleased though that they did take the time to check all of the programs. The U.U. BBS is generally not very easy to get on. It is quite busy, primarily because of frequent EMPLANT software updates, and it is common for the BBS to be off-line completely. I have had the best success in the early morning hours. The BBS maintains a PD Mac software library and contains some very useful programs. There is also a good supply of messages about the product, and any questions are usually answered within a day. It is a helpful resource, if you can get through to it. Additional on-line support is available on Usenet, in the comp.sys.amiga.emulations newsgroup, and on GEnie, both through E-Mail to J.DREW2 and the EMPLANT topic within the Amiga roundtable. COMPARISON BETWEEN EMPLANT AND AMAX I will resist the temptations to make "Apples and oranges" type statements. But AMax is monochrome only, and emulates a very old model of the Apple Macintosh -- the Mac Plus. EMPLANT emulates a color Mac IIx, and promises newer models than that. Although 16 color mode is slower than AMax (a real Mac II is slower in 16 color mode than in monochrome also), EMPLANT does support running 2 and 4 color screens that are about the same speed as AMax. Here are some speed tests using the Mac benchmark program Speedometer 3.1. Speed ratings are relative to a Mac Classic (8MHz 68000). EMPLANT AMax II (2 color) CPU 6.45 6.92 Graphics 6.74 6.13 Hard Disk 1.38 1.46 Math 7.51 5.98 The difference in CPU speed was a bit more than I expected. Other software benchmarks showed the difference to be only about 3%, which seems about right. The EMPLANT designers, knowing how much overhead is involved in the multitasking process, project the 3% figure as well. The disk speed test seems to be skewed the other way. I expected a much larger difference, because heavily disk-intensive work can be as much as 30% faster on AMax. This appears to be a case where benchmarks don't tell the exact story. Subjectively speaking, hard drive access speed is the only area where I notice a performance difference between AMax and EMPLANT in real world applications. I tried increasing the I/O buffer settings to boost EMPLANT's speed, but it was still slower. I suspect this is due to increased overhead of going through AmigaDOS, whereas AMax can install its own drivers right into the emulation. The AMax RAMdisk is also quite a bit faster than using an Amiga based RAMdisk with EMPLANT. One the other hand, floppy disk access is noticeably faster in EMPLANT when using the new full track routines of version 2.1. Inserting an unformatted (or any non-Mac) disk almost immediately brings up the dialog saying, "This is not a Mac Disk." Only read operations use the full track routines right now, but the write operations are being worked on. Full track writes are also the key to writing the Mac 800K disk format successfully with Sybil. AMax completely takes over the system, while EMPLANT runs as a multitasking Amiga application. Apart from the obvious benefits of having the Amiga still accessible while under Mac emulation, some not-so-obvious benefits also occur. Since the Amiga operating system is still running, EMPLANT can use it to access Amiga devices. Where AMax requires special hard disk drivers for each different type of drive controller, EMPLANT can use the Amiga drivers directly, giving it support for any device the Amiga itself can support. I have already seen or heard about EMPLANT running with CD-ROM, removable hard drives, flopticals, and Amiga RAMdisk programs -- all without requiring any special device drivers. This technique should be expandable in the future to support other kinds of Amiga peripherals. Transferring files between AmigaDOS and Mac drives has never been easy for either emulation. The process has already been discussed with EMPLANT. AMax requires a special program to transfer files; and as of version 2.5, it finally has the ability to transfer files at the hard drive level. The transfer program is limited to one file at a time, and can only be set up to work on one hard drive partition at a time. I still find the process cumbersome if you need to transfer a lot of files. EMPLANT will have a major advantage here if the promised update can read AmigaDOS files directly from the Mac desktop, and vice versa. It will be one of the best benefits of the multitasking design of EMPLANT. Virtual memory is not supported in either emulation right now; but when EMPLANT is updated to be 32 bit clean, which could happen as early as the first or second week in April, EMPLANT should have virtual memory support. AMax is not likely to support virtual memory, since the real Mac Plus doesn't either. Sound is not supported yet with EMPLANT. However, when it is supported, it will be the Mac II type of sound support which contains both digitized and mathematically created sounds. AMax does not support some of the new Mac II sound capability (neither does a real Mac Plus), and this may explain why I have seen some programs run silently under AMax that are supposed to have sound. So even though sound is currently an advantage of AMax, in the future it should prove to be an advantage of EMPLANT. EMPLANT does not support serial and parallel I/O through the standard Amiga ports yet. These are supported only through the two serial ports that are available as an option on the EMPLANT board. Just like a real Mac, one of these serial ports is typically used for a printer port. Many printers require flipping internal switches to change configurations from parallel to serial operation, and this would make printing from EMPLANT a pain. At the very least, serial printing from EMPLANT is slower than printing through the Amiga parallel port. I/O through the Amiga serial and parallel ports is promised for the future, but no time estimates have been given. Both versions of AMax support I/O through the Amiga ports, and AMax II+ adds additional support for two serial ports just like the EMPLANT board. AMax's screen modes are much more configurable than EMPLANT's. EMPLANT works only on a 640x400 hires-interlaced screen, or 640x512 PAL screen, with no overscan. AMax can use additional screen modes like productivity and A2024 monitor support, has overscan support, and allows you to create large virtual screens like 2048x2048 that automatically scroll to follow the mouse. There is no question that AMax is a more stable emulation than EMPLANT right now. I have some programs that fail on both emulators, but in the case of AMax, I may get a failure message, as compared to a system crash or lockup under EMPLANT. These are generally programs that try to access the Mac hardware directly. Some programs have failed or been unreliable on EMPLANT only, but most of these appear to be related to the lack of sound support. With all the changes in the EMPLANT software taking place, there are additional dangers of instability. I have one program that used to work perfectly. Somewhere along the evolution of EMPLANT, it started generating an error when the program was exited. With EMPLANT 2.0 and later, the program generates an error right after loading, and thus doesn't work at all. As soon as the Mac II emulation is more complete, and the programmers have a chance to clean up existing code instead of replacing and adding new routines, the stability of EMPLANT is likely to improve. For the moment though, you are likely to encounter more problems with EMPLANT than with AMax. PERSONAL OPINIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS When comparing the products AMax II and EMPLANT, the reader should keep in mind that AMax is an established product with years of development and refining, while EMPLANT is at the beginning of its life cycle. Many of the features that EMPLANT does not contain, were not part of AMax in its beginning either. AMax has the advantage of being extremely stable. Because it has been out for so much longer, they have had plenty of time to find and eliminate bugs. Right now, it is a more complete emulation, supporting features that EMPLANT does not offer. However, it is a great emulation of an old, outdated computer. My stock analysis program uses different colored lines to signify different things. When I called the program's customer support department to find out how to tell the lines apart on the monochrome AMax screen, he was very surprised that I wasn't using color. I used to think of the Mac as just a black and white computer, but it has been a long time since the Mac world has been that way. As time goes on, more and more programs are going to be released as Mac II specific, requiring color, or at least taking advantage of additional features of the Mac II. I believe that this makes EMPLANT better suited for the future. EMPLANT has been improving dramatically in the last few months, and in my opinion, its limitations will not be around for long. There was a time when I would have said that if you didn't need color, and didn't care about multitasking, than you should buy AMax II. I don't feel that way anymore. I think that would be a great disservice to those people who would end up watching EMPLANT achieve and then surpass the level of emulation provided by AMax II... plus seeing EMPLANT support emulations of additional computers as well. Multitasking, color, a newer model of the Macintosh line, plus emulation of other computers in the future, are advantages too good to ignore. The design goals of EMPLANT are much higher than those of AMax II, and this is what makes the product so attractive. Only time stands in the way of EMPLANT reaching these goals. The only remaining reason to buy AMax rather than EMPLANT is if you have 4 MB or less of memory and are not going to add any more. AMax will give you quite a bit more system RAM for Mac emulation on a 4MB setup. Better still though, I would recommend that you consider upgrading your RAM to 8MB or more and taking advantage of the extra benefits that EMPLANT can and will offer. UTILITIES UNLIMITED The last thing I'd like to talk about, has to do with Utilities Unlimited in general. Their credibility is probably a concern to many prospective customers, and this review would be incomplete without addressing this. U.U. first shipped EMPLANT in a condition that most companies would not even release to beta testers. Not a single person on any of the major on-line networks had a working unit until after multiple software updates. I don't know why they did this, but it seems like they did the same thing with other products of theirs, and have certainly taken a lot of heat because of it. Whether the reasons are financial, excitement, or just lack of testing on their part, all of the complaining has not changed, and may not ever change, the way they run their business. Although frustrating at times, I have actually enjoyed the "EMPLANT Experience." I have been able to make many suggestions, some of which have been included in the software. It has been exciting to witness the product's evolution. Don't get me wrong: I would have liked to have been *told* that the product was in a beta-test condition when I bought it. But based on their previous track record, I was prepared for it nonetheless. If I had wanted a finished product that worked the first time, I would not have ordered it so early. This is what so many people on Usenet refuse to accept. The problem with most of their comments is that they accuse U.U. of selling products that don't work at all, and advise people to avoid them completely. Even after many people had posted dozens of messages on Usenet about working units, I still saw messages from die hard U.U. bashers that said EMPLANT would never work! I think these are emotionally based messages coming from angry people who have had unworking U.U. products and never took the time and effort to get the problems solved. In reality, I know people who have other U.U. products -- the ones the bashers say don't work either -- and are happy with them. My version of the 'public warning' goes to people who don't have a lot of computer experience, or who have very little patience with a product that doesn't work the first time. My advice to them is to not buy a U.U. product when it is first released, but to wait until the product has been out long enough to get some of the bugs worked out. Ideally, try to find someone with the same computer configuration you have, that has a successfully working product before you buy. CLOSING This review accurately describes my impressions of the EMPLANT product. I hope it has answered your questions, and I welcome comments and any additional questions you might have. I can be reached through internet at the address jharris@cup.portal.com. All trademarks used in this review are the property of their respective owners. Reviewed by, John Harris --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu