From: vangess1@pilot.msu.edu (Rick VanGessel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Fusion Macintosh emulator
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.emulations
Date: 17 Sep 1998 11:18:52 -0400
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
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Sender: barrett@belvedere.cs.umass.edu
Message-ID: <6tr98s$25r@belvedere.cs.umass.edu>
Reply-To: vangess1@pilot.msu.edu (Rick VanGessel)
Keywords: emulation, Macintosh, commercial
X-Review-Number: Volume 1998 Number 11
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PRODUCT NAME
Fusion 3.1
BRIEF DESCRIPTION
A software based Macintosh emulator.
AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION
Name: Microcode Solutions
Address: 1799 Kiowa Ave. #107-670,
Lake Havasu City, AZ 86403-2867
Telephone: unknown
FAX: unknown
E-mail: sales@microcode-solutions.com
World Wide Web: http://www.microcode-solutions.com
LIST PRICE
$69.95 USD
DEMO VERSION
None
SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
HARDWARE
Amiga computer with at least a 68020 CPU
At least 8 MB of FAST Ram preferably directly accessable by the CPU
At least 20 MB of Hard drive space.
Roms from a real Macintosh either 256k, 512k, or 1MB in size.
Utilitizes the Emplant or A-Max boards if present.
SOFTWARE
AmigaOS 2.04 or greater.
MacOS 7.1 or newer software.
COPY PROTECTION
There is a .key file on the disk that contains Fusion which is installed on
your hard disk. The authors are very paranoid about pirating.
MACHINE USED FOR TESTING
A4000 w/12 MB 60 ns Ram on motherboard
CSPPC 604e+ 200mhz w/ 060 50 mhz
128 MB Ram on CSPPC card
CV64 w/ Cybergfx 3
MFC III card
Delfina Lite
Video Magician card
Jaz Drive
USR sportster 56k modem
INSTALLATION
The program is installed by clicking on the install icon on the Fusion floppy
disk. Then the user needs to configure the program based on his/her machine
setup. Also, the path to the mac rom needs to be configured. After the
software is installed on the Amiga side, the MacOS needs to be installed.
REVIEW
This program is great. So far I have been able to run almost all 680x0 based
Mac software that I have tried. The emulation is solid, and the speed is
quick. Other than a few minor quirks, I can not see a difference between the
emulation and the Macs I have used in the past. I am currently running
MacOS 8.1 on Fusion and even this verison of MacOS is quick. There are a
couple of incompatibilities with certain software, but these appear to be
caused by problems with the 060 library from Phase5. Fusion supports SCSI
drives, on the fly screenmode changes, Virtual Memory, 32 bit addressing (as
well as 24 bit addressing if needed, but not both at once), and pretty much
everything else that the Mac can do. The graphics performance is great on
the CV64 card due to the card using the same graphics format that Macs use
(chunky planar rather than bit planes). The authors of Fusion have even
been able to allow the owners of the 68030 to use MacOS 8.0 even though this
version of MacOS does not directly support the 030. By using the built in
SCSI support of Fusion, I can utilitize my Jaz drive and CD Rom drive just
as though a real mac was controlling them. As long as a piece of Mac
software does not attempt to access a piece of hardware directly, there
should be no problem using it with Fusion.
DOCUMENTATION
The included documentation is fairly complete. It is strictly for the Amiga
side of Fusion though. It does not attempt to teach the user how to use
MacOS.
LIKES
A nearly complete and fast 680x0 macintosh emulator. Pretty good support by
the authors since they also subscribe to the Fusion mailing list.
DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS
This verison of Fusion is an update for me. I had purchased version 2.0 a
month before this update was released and I had to pay for the update. The
fact that I had to pay for the update is not a problem, my complaint is that
this update (to 3.1) did not introduce much of anything new. It was mostly
bug fixes. Also, using the AHI fuction of Fusion slows the emulation to an
unacceptable crawl even though the Amiga side remains unchanged. The
authors blame this on AHI, I am not so sure though. The authors like to
blame other programs for possible Fusion bugs. Due to the rapidly decreasing
support for 680x0 macs, this program really needs to be ported to Amiga PPC.
COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS
This product is similar to Shapeshifter. It has features that shapeshifter
does not, like VM and screenmode changes as well as MacOS 8.x support.
BUGS
Most of the bugs that I have encountered are not Fusion related, rather they
are errors in the programming of support programs on the Amiga side (ie: 060
lib). I still think that the slow down in AHI suppport is a problem with
Fusion though. The authors seem to be quick to blame other software for
some problematic things that are clearly Fusion related. In verison 2.0,
using the memory test feature of Fusion (on the Amiga side) causeed the
machine to crash. The authors quickly told me that my CSPPC card was faulty,
either that or my ram was. Later, they fixed the problem in verison
3.0 of Fusion since many others experienced the same thing.
VENDOR SUPPORT
Blittersoft is the company that Microcode solutions chose to handle the
update. It took forever for my update to arrive. Other Fusion customers
have had similar problems.
WARRANTY
Unknown.
CONCLUSIONS
This product is well worth the money. It is a great way to get a cheap
macintosh.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
May be freely distributed.
Copyright 1998 Richard A. VanGessel, Jr.
---
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