Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: amiman99 on June 22, 2012, 04:53:47 PM
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I'm interested in Emplant board, but there is not much information on the board and the software.
Are there any users here who have one and can share their experience with the Emplant board.
How is the Mac emulation compare with Shapeshifter?
How is the 586 emulation compare with PCTask?
Also, anyone made a Youtube video showing Emplant working? I have search and found nothing.
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http://obligement.free.fr/articles/emulateurs_macintosh.php
It can be translated from the links in the left upper corner.
Shapeshifter (current version) is the best by far.
As for the 586 chip for the Emplant, as far as i know it is ultra rare to find it and very buggy and unreliable.
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I used to use Shape Shifter on my A1200, and it worked great. Fusion ( is that right?) was not bad. I have heard that Emplant was about the same, but not quite as compatible.
I have never seen the 586 module. Friends who had the Emplant never could get the 586 drivers - so I am not sure they were ever officially released.
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I'm interested in Emplant board, but there is not much information on the board and the software.
Are there any users here who have one and can share their experience with the Emplant board.
Emplant developer Jim Drew is active on the forum at Lemon64 and on the forum at http://www.commodore.ca/forum . You can send him a message, and he will answer you.
Jim Drew attending CommVEx,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
July 28-29 Commodore Vegas Expo v8 -
http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex
P.S. When Jim comes to CommVEx, I'll ask him to talk about Emplant development.
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I'm asking questions because I just acquired software for Emplant in a batch sale and I wondered if it's worth buying the actual card.
From the docs on the disks I read that 586 emulation it's software only, but it does require to install the Mac portion of the software. It also needs a PC bios file.
It would be nice if someone made a Youtube video showing how it works.
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Emplant developer Jim Drew is active on the forum at Lemon64 and on the forum at http://www.commodore.ca/forum . You can send him a message, and he will answer you.
I'd like to send him some choice messages about iFusion and why he never finished it, just took our money and gave us unfinished software. I'm sure I'm not alone in this either.
The least he could do would be to release the source.
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I'd like to send him some choice messages about iFusion and why he never finished it, just took our money and gave us unfinished software. I'm sure I'm not alone in this either.
The least he could do would be to release the source.
He doesn't own the source. It was sold to Blittersoft.
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I'm interested in Emplant board, but there is not much information on the board and the software.
Are there any users here who have one and can share their experience with the Emplant board.
How is the Mac emulation compare with Shapeshifter?
How is the 586 emulation compare with PCTask?
Also, anyone made a Youtube video showing Emplant working? I have search and found nothing.
I have tried all the software you have mentioned one time or another, (Emplant, Emplant e586, Shapeshifter, and PCTask.)
Additionally I have used Fusion, GVP PC286 (basically an At-once plus for the GVP A500 HD+ and GVP A500-030), PCx, and an A2386sx with a 486BL3.
First let us speak to the Emplant: The Emplant board it self is interesting.
It primary is used recreate mac motherboard timing. This is suppose to make Mac emulation more accurate and is utilized by both the emplant software and is an option for Fusion (not suprisingly both written by Jim Drew).
The second thing that the Emplant board can do is allow to you plug MAC roms in and rip them into a file. Note, one cannot use the plug in roms during emulation, rather the emulation uses the ripped file. This is really a unnecessary thing as software exists with both Fusion and Shapeshifter that allow you to directly rip roms from a MAC.
Optionally the Emplant also came with either/or/both appletalk ports and scsi controller. the appletalk ports again can be used with emplant and Fusion (I don't know about shapeshifer) or even natively with amigaOS. This is kinda nice if you have a couple macs, a mac printer, and an appletalk network. The scsi controller is a basic non-booting 5380 based scsi controller. Any amiga or mac emulation software can use this like any other scsi controller.
I used to use Shape Shifter on my A1200, and it worked great. Fusion ( is that right?) was not bad. I have heard that Emplant was about the same, but not quite as compatible.
I have never seen the 586 module. Friends who had the Emplant never could get the 586 drivers - so I am not sure they were ever officially released.
The 586 module was definitely released. If you want to use the e586 emulation software, the emplant board needs to have a some of its chips updated, the e586 software came with something like 4 or 5 dip chips that needed to be switched out. So only some of the emplants out there can actually use the e586 software.
As for the Mac emulation software
The emplant came with the original Emplant software. Later, circa 95ish, a newer version called Emplant Pro came out for some extra $$$$$. Nearly the same time as the Emplant Pro software the e586 emulation software can out including the extra Rom chips.
The emplant emultion software actually worked very well in my a3000. The biggest limitation was the monitor modes, I remember only being able to use a limited number of resolution/bit planes but don't remember the specifics. There was also an issue with the version of the mac roms it could use and which ones were 32 bit clean etc, but I again don't remember the specifics. The Emplant Pro solved many of the problems including adding significately more monitor modes including opalvision and I "think" worked with more roms.
This emplant pro software again was very stable for me, however I remember having issues getting the emplant pro software working with my picasso II+. I subsequently "upgrade" my emplant pro software to fusion software. Picasso96 modes are fully supported with Fusion (as well as with shapeshifter) and could fully utilize the picasso II+.
If you already have a emplant and plan to keep it in your computer Fusion worked well for me, otherwise shapeshifter is free. There are several threads on amiga.org that explain how to make them "work"
As for the PC emulation.
I used PCTask orignallly with my a500 with an 030, and subsequently with my a3000. All I remember was it was so slow that one could only really run MSDos with it.
As mentioned earlier I used e586 with the emplant. All I really remember it it allowed VGA modes, but can't remember which ones. Also PC info software identified it emulated CPU as either a 486 or a 586 (depending on the software.)
Like emplant pro to fusion, I think of PCx as being a "upgrade" from e586 software (again another Jim Drew product) and does not require the emplant. It emulates a Pentium Processor and SVGA modes I only tried this out 5 or 6 times (I already had a BB at this point.) It worked with Dos, but I cannot tell you how well it worked with anything else.
I was really very fortunate to get an inexpensive a2386sx with a cardinal (SVGA,SCSI, Audio) card not long after I got the e586 software. If you want the most compatible amiga/pc "emulation" there is nothing like a commodore or vortex bridgeboard with a real x86 processor on it.
As for the PC286. This thing has a real 286 on it actually works well for any program not requiring heavy graphic usage. The graphics generation is very slow with this emulator.
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I'd like to send him some choice messages about iFusion and why he never finished it, just took our money and gave us unfinished software. I'm sure I'm not alone in this either.
The least he could do would be to release the source.
yeah. I had blizzardPPC for a while and the iFusion never was made to run on it...
I lost interest after i sold the BlizzPPC so i don't know if it ever was fixed...
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@motormouth
Thanks for such a detailed reply!
@bbond007
It was never fixed, no. If you had a BlizzardPPC you got ripped off completely. At least on a CSPPC we got a partially working emulator.
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The people above did a good job on explaining these differences, i would only add there is no speedup using the E586 stuff on emplant since the emplant board mine as well be thought of as just a "ports" board really which is useful for the appletalk/printers etc. There is no cpu for mac or pc onboard.
i have used all the above back in the day and a real 2386 or goldengate 486 is faster for pc emulation.
Mech
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The people above did a good job on explaining these differences, i would only add there is no speedup using the E586 stuff on emplant since the emplant board mine as well be thought of as just a "ports" board really which is useful for the appletalk/printers etc. There is no cpu for mac or pc onboard.
i have used all the above back in the day and a real 2386 or goldengate 486 is faster for pc emulation.
Mech
Yes, this is good point and I was not explicit enough about this.
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I'd like to send him some choice messages about iFusion and why he never finished it, just took our money and gave us unfinished software. I'm sure I'm not alone in this either.
The least he could do would be to release the source.
I did finish this project, and it was sold to Blittersoft. They continued to work on it, and I am not sure what happened there after. I went into the PC market with FUSION-PC.
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The EMPLANT board was basically a Mac-II motherboard on a Zorro card. It contained the 5380 SCSI controller, 8530 serial chip, ROM sockets, AppleTalk ports, etc.
The timing was exact, which was something that proved rather difficult to accomplish with a software-only emulation. I was able to find quite a few programs that worked fine with EMPLANT's Mac emulation that would not work with our Fusion software when other Amiga tasks were running. Audio was the biggest problem, because OS7.5 and later used the Mac's VIAs for direct timing and so it was critical or you would get out of sync Quicktime movies.
The e586DX emulator required a change of one PEEL (custom logic chip). This enabled one of the extra VIAs on the board that was used for the PC timing (also critical for certain aspects). The emulation could run Windows (slow but sure), DOOM and other games that used the mystical "MODE X" for graphics, and pretty much everything. Speed was really based on how graphically intense things were. For DOS stuff, it was quite speedy because the BIOS was our own (after licensing a real BIOS for awhile), written in 68K assembly - just like everything else we did. So, anything that made BIOS calls worked exceptionally well. As things progressed more and more towards Windows, we started supporting the various video cards like we did for the Mac emulation. This really helped speed up things. I made one sample driver for the Retina board that mapped the Retina's registers as a PCI card and so there was no copying/converting the PC display to the Amiga display. Instead, the PC emulation wrote directly to the Retina. It was easily 25 times faster. Instead of watching the Windows logo be drawn, it instantly appeared. The mouse was smooth, you could play solitaire and basic games with real speed. DOOM also flew! The Retina was the only card we did this with because other card manufacturers would not give the info on how to access the hardware directly.
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@motormouth
Thanks for such a detailed reply!
@bbond007
It was never fixed, no. If you had a BlizzardPPC you got ripped off completely. At least on a CSPPC we got a partially working emulator.
I traded a pretty nice (at the time) notebook computer 240/060/50 Blizzard. I had it for 4 years or so and I got a fair price for it... more than I had paid for the notebook anyway... So, ripped off completely... no...
But you are right... The BlizzardPPC was never worth it, and that is why I have a Blizzard1260 now.
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The software that I acquired came with some chips ( I believe it came from Emplant board)
P1-4692-2
P2-2693
P3-3993-C
P4-2693
P5-2993
Logic L53C80PC-2 (I seen this one on Emplant from the database pics)
Anyone knows anything about them?
Thanks in advance.
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The EMPLANT board was basically a Mac-II motherboard on a Zorro card. It contained the 5380 SCSI controller, 8530 serial chip, ROM sockets, AppleTalk ports, etc.
That's interesting to hear, thanks for chiming in.
I always wondered how much the board was responsible for and how much was just a dongle.
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The EMPLANT board was basically a Mac-II motherboard on a Zorro card. It contained the 5380 SCSI controller, 8530 serial chip, ROM sockets, AppleTalk ports, etc.
The timing was exact, which was something that proved rather difficult to accomplish with a software-only emulation. I was able to find quite a few programs that worked fine with EMPLANT's Mac emulation that would not work with our Fusion software when other Amiga tasks were running. Audio was the biggest problem, because OS7.5 and later used the Mac's VIAs for direct timing and so it was critical or you would get out of sync Quicktime movies.
The e586DX emulator required a change of one PEEL (custom logic chip). This enabled one of the extra VIAs on the board that was used for the PC timing (also critical for certain aspects). The emulation could run Windows (slow but sure), DOOM and other games that used the mystical "MODE X" for graphics, and pretty much everything. Speed was really based on how graphically intense things were. For DOS stuff, it was quite speedy because the BIOS was our own (after licensing a real BIOS for awhile), written in 68K assembly - just like everything else we did. So, anything that made BIOS calls worked exceptionally well. As things progressed more and more towards Windows, we started supporting the various video cards like we did for the Mac emulation. This really helped speed up things. I made one sample driver for the Retina board that mapped the Retina's registers as a PCI card and so there was no copying/converting the PC display to the Amiga display. Instead, the PC emulation wrote directly to the Retina. It was easily 25 times faster. Instead of watching the Windows logo be drawn, it instantly appeared. The mouse was smooth, you could play solitaire and basic games with real speed. DOOM also flew! The Retina was the only card we did this with because other card manufacturers would not give the info on how to access the hardware directly.
@JimDrew
Cool, it is nice to see you responding to this thread. I have always been a fan of your emulation products, particularly Emplant Pro and Fusion. :D
I hope I got half of my post about Emplant correct.
I do have two questions: One, does the emplant board help the accuracy of emulation in Fusion. I have tried timing set both to amiga and to emplant and could not really tell a difference (I was using at the time, an A3000, A3640, PII+, 16 meg fast, and A2065).
Second what does the 3.11 patch for Fusion Fix over 3.1? Is there a way to buy or obtain this Fusion 3.11 patch? I have original disks for Fusion 3.1 (together with PCx).
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I've got an Emplant II card (second hand). The one thing that has stopped me setting it up is what to do with teh ROM images. Where do they go and what should they be called? The manual doesn't explain this and seems to assume that you're going to insert real ROMs and extract them using the supplied utility.
Can anybody clarify this please? Cheers.
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What is an Emplant II? I guess I don't know what you mean by the "II"
The following is a link to a Swedish wetsite with instructions:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/amiga/al/guide/al102/emplant_part_2.HTML
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The software that I acquired came with some chips ( I believe it came from Emplant board)
P1-4692-2
P2-2693
P3-3993-C
P4-2693
P5-2993
Logic L53C80PC-2 (I seen this one on Emplant from the database pics)
Anyone knows anything about them?
Thanks in advance.
Let me see if I can find my instructions...
I attempted to keep all this stuff including the instructions, old chips, and notes. No promises I will find it.
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@JimDrew
Cool, it is nice to see you responding to this thread. I have always been a fan of your emulation products, particularly Emplant Pro and Fusion. :D
I hope I got half of my post about Emplant correct.
I do have two questions: One, does the emplant board help the accuracy of emulation in Fusion. I have tried timing set both to amiga and to emplant and could not really tell a difference (I was using at the time, an A3000, A3640, PII+, 16 meg fast, and A2065).
Second what does the 3.11 patch for Fusion Fix over 3.1? Is there a way to buy or obtain this Fusion 3.11 patch? I have original disks for Fusion 3.1 (together with PCx).
Yes, your info was basically correct!
Yes, the EMPLANT board does improve the accuracy and compatibility. Some programs (like benchmark programs and some games) use the VIA timers directly, and even though the Amiga is pretty accurate, you can detect if the VIA emulation is being used vs. the real thing. When applications were banging on the VIA bits, things could get off when you don't have the real hardware. Quicktime was one thing that poked at the hardware directly.
I went through my source code, and found the changes.txt file:
Changes to V3.2 (04/03/2000)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Work-around for DEVPAC flognp1 bug.
* Added ICP Transfer Priority. You can now specify the priority the Mac
runs at while the drives are accessed from the Amiga side though ICP.
* Fixed OpenDevice problem with ethernet.
* Fixed ethernet query bug.
* Added TD64 support. A partition that is partially or completely above
the 4G point will cause FUSION to fail to start if TD64 support is not
available. Partitions are still limited to 4G in size.
* Added support for block sizes other than 512. Up to 64K valid.
* Fixed ICP MacBinary file copy hang. Thanks go to Fred Wright for being
the first person to accurately describe a method of reproducing the
bug so i could track it down.
* Auto-start doesn't auto-quit if you change the ICP or cpu settings.
* Added tooltype and cli switch for specifying parameter ram file.
**************************************************************************
Changes to V3.12 (02/18/2000)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Changed ethernet from software loaded to a hardware card for Open
Transport support. Cleaned up ethernet for better Amiga ethenet card
support; Ariadne card now works.
* Fixed cursor problem with old Lucas Arts games.
* Fixed problem with QD based video drivers.
* Fixed slight problem with autosense SCSI data.
* New ADB drivers with (nearly) all Mac keys mapped.
* Added tooltype support; switches from cli now have Workbench tooltype
equivalents.
* Auto-start now also implies auto-quit
* Changed 060 initial settings; now starts with only SuperScalar off.
**************************************************************************
Changes to V3.11 (xx/xx/99)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Fixed misc. problems with the interface related to the auto-iconify
feature (Tall thin windows on WB fixed).
* Fixed Timer interrupt bug that prevented QueBase from playing.
* Added support for a couple more ROMs.
* Updates to video drivers. Released to public.
* Updates to RsrvCold, and RsrvWarm which is now called RsrvKick.
Released to public.
**************************************************************************
Changes to V3.1 (02/14/98)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Fixed MonitorID gadget setting. The value was set and saved in the
config file correctly, but not displayed after loading a new config
or starting the emulation setup.
* Added Store Buffer option to the CPU cache control window. This is
an 060 only cache option.
* Fixed a major problem with the emulated SCSI support. If you did not
have an EMPLANT board installed (and selected for use by FUSION), you
could not boot from any non-EMPLANT SCSI device. If you had an
EMPLANT board installed (and selected as the hardware type), then you
could boot from ANY SCSI device even if you did not have a drive
connected to EMPLANT's SCSI port.
* Fixed a problem with the Direct video drivers when an invalid monitor
ID was given.
* Added support for the floppy eject/insert icons for thousands and
millions display modes. Also corrected placement problems when the
screen's mod was not the same as its width.
* Added new gadget 'Start Delay' to ADVANCED setup and renamed the gadget
'Iconify on startup' to 'Auto-Iconify'. The Start Delay checkbox
defaults to ON (checked). Having this gadget checked will insert a
3 second delay before the startup sound. This gives you extra time to
press (and HOLD) either SHIFT key to disable extensions. Having this
gadget unchecked boots the MAC as normal, with no additional delay.
* Fixed AmiDirectXL startup in 640x480 mode. The autoscroll flag was not
being set correctly, so ECS machines would lose the bottom part of the
display until you re-opened the mode in the Monitors control panel
* Changed serial port code to open/close an AmigaDOS device only when the
MAC actually opens/closes its serial port driver. This leaves the serial
and parallel ports available for use by the Amiga when the MAC is not
trying to access them.
* Changed keyboard emulation to be an extended keyboard. You can use
'KeyCaps' to see all of the new keys available.
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So, who's going to do the Fusion + Emplant versus Shapeshifter speed/compatibility comparison?:p
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So, who's going to do the Fusion + Emplant versus Shapeshifter speed/compatibility comparison?:p
I don't have any benchmarks to give but i ran both emplant and fusion for many years and threw about everything i could find at them. I found fusion worked very well without a emplant and never noticed any of the problems Jim mentions could arise(thats not to say they were'nt there) i just didn't notice them so fusion was pretty rock solid with my picasso IV in a A4000 and looked pretty good with the 256+ colors using picasso IV fusion drivers.
I seem to recall in the end i had macos 8x updated to i think 8.2 running.
In the early days i used the emplant ports to hook to laser printers to tinker with using macprint(i think it was). It was also good for running early IE/netscape and later Icab sharing the amiga's ethernet connection- It was a way to have a somewhat modern browser in early times(although Ibrowse was great in the pre flash/java/bloated web stuff era). I do think fusion was as fast or faster than the emplant but again i don't have any hard data to back that up.
Mech
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What is an Emplant II? I guess I don't know what you mean by the "II"
The following is a link to a Swedish wetsite with instructions:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/amiga/al/guide/al102/emplant_part_2.HTML
Sorry, my typo. It's an Emplant rev 1.5.
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The FUSION software was a bit faster than the standard EMPLANT software because of a few changes we made to the multitasking code, MMU page swapping (in Mac OS), Mac OS patch code, and a few improvements to our already blazingly fast math.
Go compare Shapeshifter benchmarks to ours. You will find, especially in math, that FUSION is faster. In fact, until Speedometer 4.0 came out, we were breaking just about every Mac benchmark's math test. We replaced Packs 4 and 5 (Apples math packages) with our own 68K/FPU hand optimized code. The difference was so extreme that Hollywood production studios such as Amblin Entertainment were using our emulation in place of real Macs for rendering and running Avid video systems.
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I'm watching this thread as closely as possible. I have an Emplant v1.5 board (pics of it are on Amiga-Hardware) and wouldn't mind doing some Mac emulation with it. I have no software for it, though, so I'll have to obtain that.
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Let me see if I can find my instructions...
I attempted to keep all this stuff including the instructions, old chips, and notes. No promises I will find it.
The software that I acquired came with some chips ( I believe it came from Emplant board)
P1-4692-2
P2-2693
P3-3993-C
P4-2693
P5-2993
Logic L53C80PC-2 (I seen this one on Emplant from the database pics)
Anyone knows anything about them?
Thanks in advance.
Well I did not find the instructions, but I did find my old notes and the original emplant chips.
my notes say:
I replaced Gal 1 for the 586 update, the original gal 1 was labeled P1-5092-1
I replaced Gal 3 for the Mac Pro update, the original gal 3 was labeled P3-4693-C
Note: This is not in any way definitive. beware these note are over 15 years old. Any damage you do is at your own risk....
I would have to open my A3000 to find out was is on the board now.
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That info seems correct to me. Although those are PEELs, not GALs or PALs.
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The FUSION software was a bit faster than the standard EMPLANT software because of a few changes we made to the multitasking code, MMU page swapping (in Mac OS), Mac OS patch code, and a few improvements to our already blazingly fast math.
Go compare Shapeshifter benchmarks to ours. You will find, especially in math, that FUSION is faster. In fact, until Speedometer 4.0 came out, we were breaking just about every Mac benchmark's math test. We replaced Packs 4 and 5 (Apples math packages) with our own 68K/FPU hand optimized code. The difference was so extreme that Hollywood production studios such as Amblin Entertainment were using our emulation in place of real Macs for rendering and running Avid video systems.
The speed was one of the reasons i preferred fusion i guess..It really did a great job.
Interesting stuff about Amblin.
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That info seems correct to me. Although those are PEELs, not GALs or PALs.
Jim:
I was always impressed with your work and Emplant was a great product! A few questions:
1. How long did Emplant take to create? How many software revisions were there when you stopped?
2. Did Commodore ever approach you for a deal with Emplant?
3. I spoke to Simon Douglas a few times (AMAX author) and he said that you and him were friends. Did you guys ever swap code or bounce problems off each other? Do you know where he ended up?
Trivia: Simon said (no pun intended) that he was reading an article about the folks that wrote the Mac emulator for the ST (Magic-sac) as they were porting it to the Amiga. However, after some time they deemed the Amiga to 'weird' to write a Mac emulator on. Something about Chip Memory... Anyway, he jumped in and had a Mac emulator working to the boot screen in a weekend. Of course, it took more time to go from the boot screen to a final product, but I thought it was a great story.
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The EMPLANT board took about a week to work out and create. The software seemed to take ages, but since were reverse engineering the Mac that was not much of a surprise. Every time Apple released a new version of the OS, we had to go figure out what changed and how to patch it.
Commodore didn't want the headache of dealing with Apple for licensing ROMs. They were very supportive of our efforts, giving us permission to take and alter the multitasking code. We were the only company that actually had this permission.
I wasn't really friends with Simon Douglas in the sense where we hung out (he was in Canada as far as I recall). However, we did chat a few times and I believe their was a mutual respect for our capabilities. Simon was just on the wrong end of the stick with our mission to destroy Readysoft over their breach of contract. Simon and I talked more about the a theif stealing a huge amount of his code for Shapeshifter.
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@amiman99
Did you end up getting your emplant board working with the e586 module?
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@amiman99
Did you end up getting your emplant board working with the e586 module?
No not yet, and from the discussions it looks like there is no real benefits running the MAc/PC emulations vs Mac fusion/PCTask software.
I may keep an eye on it and get it, if is cheap, as a historical value.
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Jim Drew has listed all the items he intends to sell at CommVEx. To see the list, go to
http://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=commvex:vendor_info
Writing from The Beat Coffeehouse in Las Vegas,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
July 28-29 Commodore Vegas Expo v8 -
http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex