From: knyal@ils.nwu.edu (Jarrett Knyal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.emulations
Subject: My 1st experience w/Emplant
Date: 13 Nov 92 17:30:26 GMT
Organization: Institute for the Learning Sciences


     O.K., I received Emplant on Tuesday and finally got a chance to install it
last night.    It didn't go well.  I put the card in, no problems there.  It
fit in well, unlike other cards I've had which don't really align properly.
      I received the "Deluxe" option.  That means I've got a SCSI interface on
the board and serial ports too.  I connected my Syquest 88 M drive to the SCSI
port on the Emplant board.  The Syquest has a Mac format cartrige in it that
has System 7.  Amax II+ has no problem booting up with this cartrige.  I fired
up the system and copied all the necessary files off the Emplant disk in to the
corresponding directories on my hard drive.  Basically, I just went through all
the typical directories (S:, C:, libs:, l:, fonts:, etc.) and if it was on the
Emplant disk and not on my harddrive, I put it there.
I did this because I basically knew from experience that this needed to be
done.  There was no install program and it wasn't documented anywhere in the
(pathetic) manual.  What if I was relatively new to the Amiga and didn't know
to do this?
     Anyhoo,  I put the command "rsrvmem37" in my startup-sequence, which I
assumed needed to be done by examining the startup-sequence on the Emplant
disk, not because it was actually documented anywhere.  I put it later in the
sequence in the "user-startup".  I understand now that it needs to go into
earlier in the sequence which I will try to do tonight.
     I put all the Emplant files and directories into a directory on my
harddrive (not the Syquest, a Quantum internal hooked up to a GVP SCSI
interface with 4 M of RAM on it).  Assuming I was ready to roll I did a warm
boot to execute the modified startup-sequence.  The machine continually
crashed, it never got to the workbench screen.  I commented the rsrvmem command
out and tried again.  It booted up fine and I proceeded to run the Emplant
software.  I usually got a "no disk in drive df0:" message after I launched the
software.  I hit cancel the first few times, then I put a disk in the drive but
it always crashed after that point anyway.  A couple of times I actually got to
the main Emplant screen a was able to move the mouse around for a few seconds
before it totally locked up.  I never got past this point despite about 10
re-booots.
     I then tried to boot directly off the Emplant floppy.  No luck.  It never
got past the "rsrvmem37" command
     I DO NOT have SYBIL hooked up to my machine.  I bought the package a long
time ago and never got it to work.  Mr Drew said he thought it was probably
because of my SuperGen 2000S.  I hated the thing anyway and was planning on
using my Amax II+ for getting Mac files on floppy.
     
     I have no idea why I'm having all these problems.  Just to give you all
some background about my system, this is how it's configured:

- B2000 w/2.04 and 2 internalfloppy drives.
- 40 M Quantum SCSI drive connected to a GVP Series II controller w/ 4M ram
- PP&S 28 MHz'040 with 16 M 32 bit-wide ram
- SuperGen 2000S in video slot
- Ficker Fixer running out of a DEB board.
- AmaxII+ connected to Mac floppy drive
- 88M Syquest

     I also have a host of other peripherals but they are irrelevent to this
discussion as they were not connected.
     NEVER have I experienced an Amiga program (I've had an Amiga since '87)
that has more violently crashed my system.  It's almost like the software was
written specifically to get GURU's.  Since I've upgraded to 2.04 GURU's have
been blessedly absent and their return was not welcome.
     EMPLANT never should have been released in its present state.  I think
J.D. and UU got so much pressure they had no choice; and the reason they had no
choice was because they billed people's cards before they started shipping the
thing.  Dumb move.
     I personally resent paying $340.00 for the frustrating *opportunity* to be
a beta tester for EMPLANT.  I would not recommend that anyone purchase EMPLANT
in its' present state.  I also resent being expected to get the latest software
off the UU BBS.  I don't have a modem.  Why can't these files be put on some
FTP site?  Can someone do this?  It would really help.
     If anyone can offer any help/explanations/advice I'd *REALLY* appreciate
it.  Has anyone out there got EMPLANT to work?