Emplant e586 module review.

  PRODUCT NAME

   Emplant e586 emulation module

  BRIEF DESCRIPTION

   The long-awaited 586DX emulator software for the Emplant card.

  AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

   Name:  Utilities Unlimited International. Inc.

   Address:  790 N. Lake Havasu Avenue #16
             Lake Havasu City, AZ  86403
             USA

  COPY PROTECTION

   Software updates are freely distributed.  However, you MUST PURCHASE
   the 586DX module.  A hardware upgrade to the Emplant card (a chip
   which you must replace on your card) is included with the module.


  MACHINE USED FOR TESTING


   Amiga 4000 WB 3.1

   40Mhz 'o4o Warp Engine
   
   Picasso II, Video Toaster
  
   2MB Chip 16MB Fast

   DEC 1 Gigabyte SCSI-II hard disk


  REVIEW

     The Emplant e586DX upgrade is quite possibly one of the most sought
 after "Holy Grails" in Amiga history.  For over a year it's feasibility
 and the probability that it might someday actually exist was battled over
 (sometimes, rather violently) in comp.sys.amiga.emulations.  Supporters
 of Jim Drew (the creator of the Emplant) and disbelievers (who were quite
 vociferous) formed factions in c.s.a.e. and battled on a day-to-day basis
 for months and months.  It would seem the e586 ranks right up there with
 the Video Toaster before its release and, of course, the Mac emulation
 before its release.

     With the inception of the e586 software, users were promised the
 ability to truly run multiple operating systems on the same computer at
 the same time without any additional expensive hardware.  The e586
 promised to be many times faster and more compatible than any other
 software emulation on any other platform.  It was a dream come TRUE for
 Amiga users - we could keep our Amigas, yet still be able to run all of
 the popular software previously available only to users of other operating
 systems.

     In a nutshell, here is what you should expect from e586 version 1.1:

  -You must obtain a BIOS.  The BIOS I (successfully) used was the s82.bios

  -The emulation recognized and formatted a partition on my SCSI-II Amiga
   drive.

  -MS-DOS installed with no problem.

  -Windows will not work.  Don't waste your time trying at this point.
   After manually installing windows (as the install crashes on the second
   disk), Windows will attempt to run.  All you will see is a nasty yellow
   Windows startup screen made of pixelated vertical bands.  The words
   "Microsoft Windows" are almost not readable.  The emulation will then
   lock.

  -Benchmarking programs are meaningless when run on the emulation.


     My opinion?  The emulation feels fast.  If I had to make a guess as to
 the equivalent machine I was running on, I'd say it was a 33Mhz 386sx.
 This is based solely from my (rather extensive) experience with PCs. I
 think the emulation has potential.  However, at this point it is nothing
 more than a really neat toy.  Without the ability to run Windows or any
 other application which opens up a graphics screen, it is at this point
 fairly useless.

  Here is a list of things which I have tried:

   Program            Does it work?                   Comments

  MS-DOS 6.22             Yes                  Feels nice and responsive
  Windows                 No                   Locks on Startup
  DOOM                    No                   Locks on Startup
  WordPerfect             Yes                  Can not preview-print
  Wolfenstine 3D          No                   Locks on Startup
  AutoCad X               No                   Locks when displaying model

     Here are some comments Jim Drew (creator of the Emplant) included with
  the e586DX emulation...

          The PC emulation was first started after the first version of
     EMPLANT's MAC emulation was released.  Due to numerous machine
     incompatibilities with the MAC emulation, a large portion of our
     programming time was dedicated to iron out the problems.  Several
     months later, we again resumed work with the PC emulation.  Nearly a
     year later (and dozens of updates to the MAC emulation), the first
     actual test was done.  Egads, was it slow.
         It worked, and it was faster than anything else available, but
     it was really not that usable... good experience.  In late August of
     1994, we started from scratch, now having a good understanding of how
     the PC  architecture worked.
         Speed galore... beating a real 66Mhz DX2 in quite a few tests
     (with  40Mhz 68040 processors) made our day since we knew that there
     is always room for improvements.  After playing with some 3rd party
     EMM386 clone programs, we noticed some interesting problems with the
     MMU setup.      
         The problems turned out to be so severe that we were forced to
     start from scratch again.  Now, a few days later, it is amazing to see
     how fast coding goes compared to the 'learning curve' we had to start
     with.  Our first attempt took more than year; our second attempt took
     6 months; and our third attempt has been 6 days so far, and it is
     nearly ready for testing.
          Our new code is about 1/4 the size and could be as much as twice
     as fast.  A lot of this new code is due to the PowerPC version of this
     emulation.  Since this product is being developed for both the Amiga
     and PowerMAC platforms, changes in one machine's code can often lead
     to optimizations in another machine's code... such as we have found
     when working with PowerPC assembly and 68K assembly.
           The executable code released on this disk is more than 1.75 megs
     (Yes, it is compressed).  The source code totals more than 10 megs and
     even with a 40Mhz 68040 processor, it takes several minutes to
     assemble.
           There are thousands of man hours in this project, and I am sure
     that we are nowhere near where we want to be.  But, as with the MAC
     emulation, upgrades will be readily available, and we welcome your
     suggestions to make this emulation module as productive as possible.

      Sincerely,

      Jim, Joe, & Mark

  CONCLUSION

     I think that after a few more updates this will be a fine, usable
  product.  As it stands, it is not very useful unless all you want to run
  are text-based DOS programs.



                              Chris Kemp