Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett From: seebs@intran.xerox.com (Peter Seebach) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: MINI-REVIEW: Warp Engine 3040 68040 accelerator for Amiga 3000 Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Date: 23 Feb 1995 19:00:37 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 210 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <3iim0l$ppt@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: seebs@intran.xerox.com (Peter Seebach) NNTP-Posting-Host: astro.cs.umass.edu Keywords: hardware, accelerator, 68040, A3000, commercial Originator: barrett@astro.cs.umass.edu PRODUCT NAME Warp Engine 3040 (Amiga 3000 version) BRIEF DESCRIPTION This is a 40 MHz 68040 accelerator/SCSI-II controller/RAM expansion device for the A3000. It is closely related to the A4000 version. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: MacroSystem Development Address: 24282 Lynwood, Suite 201 Novi, Michigan 48374 USA Telephone: (810) 347-3332 FAX: (810) 347-6643 Email: macrosystem@cryogenic.com Support BBS: CryoCafe BBS (503) 257-4823 Accessible on Telnet to address 199.2.115.2 port 42 Mailing list: There is also a mailing list available for WarpEngine support. To subscribe to the list, send mail to majordomo@icecube.cryogenic.com with "subscribe warped" in the BODY of the message. LIST PRICE Somewhere around $1400-1500 US. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE The Warp Engine is not expected to work with Static Column ZIP RAM chips. This is not documented, but the manufacturer will admit it if pressed. SOFTWARE I believe this requires Kickstart 2.04 (or 3.1) ROMs. COPY PROTECTION Dongle (hardware device attached to an Amiga port) (Sort of. ;-) ) MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 3000 2/16 megabytes RAM (see below) 2.04/NetBSD 1.0-current INSTALLATION Hardware installation: see below for more details. A small amount of trivial software installation of the "drag the X directory" variety. REVIEW I am assuming the reader has read the other reviews of this product; I am primarily covering differences for the 3000 version. [MODERATOR'S NOTE: reviews of the A3000T/A4000 version are found in the comp.sys.amiga.reviews archives in the hardware/accelerators directory, filenames WarpEngine4040 and WarpEngine4040_2. - Dan] First off: The A3000 (non-tower) version has *two* SIMM slots. Not four. The documentation specifically contradicts this. The packaging contradicts this. This is bad. The Warp Engine is not compatible with Static Column ZIPs. This is not mentioned in the docs. At least one person I talked to has it running with them, but it wouldn't run that way for me. The SCSI-II controller is incompatible with the A3000's motherboard controller. This is also not documented. If you use the 3000's controller, you may or may not experience random crashes, and will very likely see random disk failures on drives off the A3000's controller. It is incompatible with some disks (as noted before). I was able to work around the latter by getting a -08 revision SCSI chip. With this, I can use my CD-ROM again. The board is blindingly fast. I was primarily working under NetBSD, and I encountered one problem that went away with a later revision of NetBSD. All of the other bugs have been confirmed by MacroSystem. They do not support the use of the WarpEngine with the internal SCSI controller; that's merely something I was able to get to work. DOCUMENTATION The documentation simply fails to cover adequately the known problems and limitations. The A3000 docs are a separate page; the main manual is for the 4000. The documentation describes features specific to a motherboard other than the one I have; they cannot be followed precisely. Many things that should have been in the docs were left out; see above. LIKES It's fast, and it's quite nice to be able to have SCSI-II, memory, and a fast accelerator, all without using a Zorro slot. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS I was upset by the poor documentation, and the blatant inaccuracies in it. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS It's faster than a 4000 or an '040 NeXT. This is about all I can compare to. BUGS The ones I found: 1. Static Column ZIPs may not work. This is not documented. 2. Not compatible with native SCSI driver. 3. May not work with some SCSI devices; reason unknown. VENDOR SUPPORT The technical support hours are minimal; business hours only, two days a week. There is no 800-number, so this required me to make a long distance call from work. The first support representative I talked to was unable to give me any useful information. The response to my complaint that the documentation and packaging are inaccurate (in reference to the 2 vs. 4 SIMM issue) was "If you don't like it, you can always take it back." This strongly tempted me to. The representative had never heard of Unix, and was unable to grasp my statement that NetBSD was not running under AmigaDOS, and did not need 68040.library. The second representative I talked to (two days later, after I had figured out one or two things) was able to inform me of the details of the RAM issue (that Static Column is a problem) and told me more about the problems with internal SCSI. After this, I was able to work things out on my own, at some length. Some of their representatives are better than others. I did not get any responses to any of my email to their given email addresses; I suspect the sole person maintaining them is awfully busy. WARRANTY [see previous articles] CONCLUSIONS The product is, for what it is, an excellent product. It is not exactly what the packaging claims. It is by no means plug and play. It is extremely fast and responsive. I have found the system I run to be at least 6-10 times as fast as it used to be. (This is a combination of processor speed, memory speed, and disk speed, I suspect.) The technical support and documentation are poor. Make sure you know competent repair techs before undertaking to work with this, especially if your A3000 was not one of the most recent batches. I rate it 4 stars out of 5 overall. I would love to see these people provide better support for what looks like it could be an excellent product. I'd love to see more honesty in the advertisements, packaging, and documentation. If every issue that they told me they already knew about had been in the manual, it would have taken me two days, not two weeks, to get my system running. COPYRIGHT NOTICE This review is placed in the public domain. Go wild. - Peter Seebach seebs@intran.xerox.com --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews