honp9@menudo.uh.edu (Jason L. Tibbitts III) (04/02/91)
[Two users sent me the comments below relating their experiences with
Vortex's ATonce hardware IBM AT emulator. My many thanks to them both.]
From: "Bill Kindel..LTN1-1/D07..DTN 226-6505 24-Mar-1991 1842" <kindel@ultra.enet.dec.com>
I read with interest Todd's review that you posted in the
comp.sys.amiga.reviews newsgroup. I've had ATonce installed for about
a month and have experienced some (but not all) of the difficulties
reported in the review.
First my configuration:
A500, Rev 5 motherboard, 512KB Fat Agnus
A501 clone (Microbotics, I think) clock/memory expansion
A590 hard disk controller, containing
+ Quantum 105S SCSI drive in lieu of standard 20MB AT drive
+ 2MB Fast RAM installed
Second 3.5" (clone) diskette drive
A1020 5.25" diskette drive
My ATonce configuration is as follows:
640KB "base" memory
512KB expanded memory
512KB extended memory
COM1 is mouse (yes, it works for me)
COM2 is disabled
LPT1 is enabled
Disk A: is DF0:
Disk B: is DF1:
{ I may change A: and B: to DF1: & DF2: if I feel the need
to use the 5.25" drive with ATonce. }
Disk C: is an 18MB file on the hard disk
{ I decided to go this route mostly because I couldn't figure
out how to mount an MS-DOS partition without the Workbench
presenting an unusable icon. The file uses up the bulk of
the partition, which also has a blank icon in Disk.info and
has been named " " (sleazy, huh? 8^) and room for growth. }
CGA 4-color graphics (black, white, dark blue, light blue)
I found ATonce a bit fragile to configure. Certain memory
configurations simply wouldn't work for me and/or would cause ATonce
and/or AmigaDOS to "hang" or GURU. Booting from a floppy is only
BARELY tolerable, and requires patience of the user in order to avoid
having the diskette drive become lost between modes.
Getting the CGA colors to appear as specified was quite difficult. I'm
convinced the ATonce install program has something BACKWARDS in the way
it stores the RGB values of the various selected colors. Since I have
only 512KB of CHIP RAM, I have to be EXTREMELY careful when specifying
the graphics mode -- 16-color CGA pushes things over the edge, leading
to GURUs; 8-color CGA is slow (as predicted) and leaves only a few KB
of CHIP RAM available for use on the AmigaDOS side.
I'm using MS-DOS V3.30 and have very little difficulty. An older
version of MS-DOS was unable to recognize the mouse. It's not exactily
a speed demon, as Todd's tests bear out. It IS, however, an order of
magnitude faster than the Transformer, and provides a more complete
emulation, also.
All in all, now that I've managed to get it configured to my liking, I
like ATonce. I think the developers owe us an upgrade to the install
program and possibly (if the recent Amiga World article is accurate) to
the BIOS emulator to make things happen more predictably.
Bill Kindel
--------------------
From: patrick_meloy@outbound.wimsey.bc.ca (Patrick Meloy)
In response to your ATOnce posting I'd like to tell you my findings.
I have the ATonce set up on the following: A500 (newer) A501, A590 w/Seagate
ST157N & 2 MB ram.
I had no trouble creating either the virtual MSDOS drive or formatting a
partition to MSDOS. I did find however that telling the setup software to
boot from HD before DOS and all the rest were installed is NOT a good idea.
It would give me all the nasty problems that you have discribed. I've also
discovered that the SETUP software should only be used when the ATonce is not
currently running since it seems ATonce will only check the configuration
information after a cold boot.
Also, if you have created a virtual drive, I found the setup program always
Guru'd after when you exit the setup. It does save all the changes you have
made and doesn't seem to do anything nasty to the HD so its only an
annoyance.
The mouse support was not a really_big problem, the only thing I couldn't get
to run with it was 'GeoWorks' by Berkley software. During the mouse test
portion of the install it would 'splat' the mouse pointer and lock up.
Microsoft Windows 3 and Microsoft works had no trouble with the mouse.
Floppy drive support is quite poor. If I made the mistake of typing in the
ATonce window immediatly after inserting a disk in DF0: It would usually
(80%) lock the ATonce and guru the machine.
Also, I attached a 5.25" drive (commodores 1020 drive) and could not get the
ATonce to recognise it no matter what I did with setup.
All in all I can get the ATonce working nicely as long as I take my time and
remember not to do certain things. I think the software for it should really
still be in BETA (Not even Gamma) and I will also be sending mine back. I'll
watch for software upgrades and probably buy a new one when they address the
multitude of problems.
---------------------------------------
| patrick_meloy@outbound.wimsey.bc.ca |
| 'The Outbound' BBS Vancouver BC |
---------------------------------------
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