Fresh Fish 9/FreshFishVol9-CD2.bin/bbs/reviews/emulation.lha/emulation/Emplant_2

Text File | 1993-04-04 | 50.5 KB | 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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Reply-To: [e-mail] (John Harris)
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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 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!
<grin>

    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 [e-mail].

    All trademarks used in this review are the property of their
respective owners.

Reviewed by,
John Harris


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