Subject: REVIEW: Wildfire 68060 accelerator for A2000
From: [email-masked] (Dave Birdsong)
Date: 24 Oct 1996 00:57:59 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

	DKB Wildfire

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	The Wildfire is a Motorola 68060 50MHz accelerator for the A2000,
with SCSI Controller, PCI Bus, Ethernet, and RAM slots.

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

	Name:		DKB Software
	Address:	29318 Lorie Lane
			Wixom, Mi 48393

	Telephone:	(810) 348-3755
	FAX:		(810) 348-3531

	E-mail:		[email-masked]

LIST PRICE

	$1379.99 (US).
	Street Price $1299.99.

DEMO VERSION

	None.

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	HARDWARE

		A2000 or A2500.
		Kickstart 3.x ROM.

	SOFTWARE
	
		AmigaDOS 3.x only.

COPY PROTECTION
	 
	None.
 
MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

	Amiga 2000 in a BoMac Tower
	1MB Chip RAM and 12MB Fast RAM 
	Quantum 420MB Hard Drive
	1 880K Floppy
	ICD Flicker Fixer
	Multiface III 

	3.1 ROM, 2.1 Workbench (The ROM was all I needed to get the
	Wildfire to work and since it was a loaner, I didn't install
	the 3.1 software on my system.)

INSTALLATION

	Plug in card with RAM, and reboot the computer.
	
REVIEW

	First thing I must say, I don't think I will be using my Amiga
2000 much longer.  Why you might ask, has Dave given up on Amiga's all
together?  The answer is no, it just might be too painful.

	A few week ago I finally got around to installing a DKB Wildfire 
060 in order to do a this review.  First I must list just what my 
system was, and what is now.

	Old System: A2000, 2.1, ICD Trifecta SCSI II/IDE controller
	with 2 MB RAM installed on it, Commodore 2620 accelerator with
	4MB of 32bit RAM, with a Conner 420MB IDE hard drive.

	New system: A2000, 3.1 DKB Wildfire 060 with 12MB RAM on it
	and a Quantum 420MB hard drive.

	There was some trouble getting the DKB Wildfire into my A2000,
but it really wasn't DKB's fault, but instead ICD.  It turns out that
the Trifecta was not compatible with the 3.1 ROM.  That meant taking a
DKB spitfire controller and connecting the Quantum drive to it and
cloning my system onto it.  Once that was done, we installed the 3.1
ROM, the DKB Wildfire and one word best decribes my reaction to the
Wildfire.  WOW (not that I can even spell wow backwards too.)

	Owning as many computers as I do and working them everyday, I
have gotten spoiled by difference in performance of the 486 WinTell
machines and the Mac's I own.  Not to mention the Pentiums and
PowerMac I have at work . (I am a manager of a CompUSA store.)  One
thing I can tell you is that every computer today takes way to long to
boot up.  My to 486's take about 4 minutes to boot and my PowerMac
7100/80 3 to 4 minutes also.  My Amiga with the 020' took about 4
minutes to boot also and you might say that is way to long, but
consider that I am loading my BBS software and DirOpus when I start
the computer and that is over 4 megs of software just to run it.  With
the DKB Wildfire my system boots in just under 16 seconds! When you
have to reboot it is not as painful as it once was.

	My use of my Amiga is far different from most users. My system
these day is not used for much more than my BBS.  So I must point out
just the Wildfire made my BBS better.  Take doing a new message scan,
there are close to 40 message bases that don't get used like the
should, but still with the 2620 install it would take close to 30
seconds to scan if there were no new messages.  With the Wildfire it
takes all of 2 seconds.  When I signed on as a new user and made a QWK
bundle (QWK is a format for bundling the messages and compressing them
for the users to download and read off line).  I set it up to bundle
500 messages and compress them into an LHA file.  With the 2620 it
took about 8 minutes to bundle them, with the Wildfire it took all of
20 seconds to bundle them.  Even downloads seem to be a little faster
also.

	Next I did some comparison test with the same 89K JPEG file
using my PowerMac 7100/80 with 40MB RAM and JpegView and the Wildfire
with 12MB RAM using VT on my Amiga.  The Jpeg file open in 20 seconds
on the Amiga and 30 seconds on the PowerMac.  The speed is something
else, and as I mentioned in the first line of the article, I don't
know if I will be able to keep the old Amiga when I have to give Dean
Brown his Wildfire back to him.

	Next is just how stable is the system?  With the old system I
could go for weeks with out rebooting, and after 8 weeks the only time
I rebooted was to move the computer or to add some more RAM to the
system (I started with just 4MB of RAM and I later added another 8MB's
of RAM to make the system even better.)  I must say I had my doubts on
whether my BBS software would work with the 060' as several owners of
DLG couldn't get it to work with any of the 040' that came out a few
years ago.  But I have had no problems with DLG or any other software
I have use with it.  Now I am back to my 020's and the speed of a
snail.  Anyone want to buy a slow Amiga?

DOCUMENTATION

	Short and to the point booklet that was easy to follow.

LIKES

	Can you say Speed?

DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS

	Dislikes.. The fact that I had to give it back... (In other
words, None.)

COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	Not seeing other 060's I cannot compare it to them.

BUGS

	I experienced none in the 2 months I used it.

VENDOR SUPPORT

	Great...  I am the president and founder of the Waterford
Amiga Users Group (WAUG) and Dean Brown is a member of our group.  I
have watch and drooled over the development of this product for a long
time.  I am not a paid employee of DKB.

WARRANTY

	1 year Limited

CONCLUSIONS

	I must say it again, if my main computer was still my Amiga I
would sell the Wife or one of the kids to get it.. (just kidding about
selling the Wife and kids).  If you are a diehard fan of the Amiga,
using a Toaster, or just want to have the fastest computer on the
block.. then by all means buy the DKB Wildfire.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

	Copyright 1996 David J. Birdsong

David J. Birdsong
Highland Michigan.
[email-masked]
http://www.msen.com/~midiman/index.htm

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