Subject: REVIEW: Fusion Forty 68040 card for Amiga 2000
From: [email-masked] (Teddy Wang)
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 15:57:36 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

	Fusion Forty

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	The Fusion Forty is an accelerator card for the Amiga 2000 series,
using the Motorola 68040 chip running at 28Mhz (overclocked 25Mhz chip).
It has an optional 32-bit RAM expansion, and the company promises future
32-bit expansion capabilities.

COMPANY INFORMATION

	Name:		RCS Management
	Address:	120 McGill St.
			Montreal, Que.
			Canada H2Y 2E5
	Telephone:	(514)288-7825

LIST PRICE

	The current list price according to the December 1992 issue of
AmigaWorld is $1650 U.S.  dollars.  I've seen it advertised for $1200 by
mail order vendors.

FULL DESCRIPTION

	The Fusion Forty (F40), first announced in 1991 after Motorola
announced the processor, was the first 68040 accelerator available on the
market.  It uses the "full" 68040 chip, not the slower "EC" version, running
at an overclocked 28Mhz, with an FPU and 2 MMUs on the chip.  It works only
in the CPU slot of Amiga 2000 series computers.  The Fusion Forty was
originally designed to work under KickStart 1.3, but RCS has since updated
their software to support KS 2.0 and has hence dropped their development for
KS 1.3 compatibility.

	The Fusion Forty is a four-layer board with various chips on it.
The biggest is the 68040 which comes with a large heat sink to dissipate
heat.  32-bit RAM is managed by two SIMM sockets which accommodate both
1-megabyte or 4-megabyte SIMM modules of 80ns or faster RAM.  Each SIMM
socket accepts four of one size (either 1x8(9) or 4x8(9)) SIMMs, meaning
that RAM can be added in 4, 8, 16, 20, and 32 meg increments.  Note that
this RAM does not autoconfigure.  According to RCS, they don't autoconfigure
the RAM for two reasons:  so that they can overcome the Amiga 2000's 8 meg
limit, and (they claim) autoconfiguring the RAM would make it slower.

	There are two 32-bit expansion slots on the Fusion Forty which are
for future developments from RCS.  RCS has hinted that they will be
releasing a 32-bit CHIP RAM accelerator one of these days.

	Finally, the Fusion Forty is capable of reverting back to the
standard 68000 mode via a hardware switch in the back of the unit,
accessible at the back of the computer.  (NEVER USE THIS SWITCH WHILE THE
POWER IS ON.)

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

	I used my only Amiga 2000 for the testing.  It is rather old (4.5
years) with a revision 4.3 motherboard, on which I exchanged the Fat Agnus
for the Fatter 1 meg Agnus two years ago.  ROM is KickStart 2.04 which was
installed in the beginning of the summer, and I still haven't gotten the ECS
Denise yet.  Oh yeah, I've got an ICD Flicker Free Video 2 installed which I
would heartily recommend to anybody who's annoyed at flicker as much as I
am....

	I installed one bank of one-megabyte SIMMs early this summer to give
me 4 megs of RAM, and three weeks ago I added another bank giving me a grand
total of 8 megs.

	There were some compatibility problems with the Fusion Forty and
some of my hardware.  I had to do the following before I could get the
Fusion Forty to work correctly.

	1.  Replace the CMOS Gary chip with a new Commodore-manufactured one.

	2.  Replace the hard drive controller in my machine, an IVS
	    Trumpcard Professional, with to a ICD AdSCSI unit since there
	    seemed to be some incompatibilities with the IVS unit in my
	    machine.  I have been since told by two people that the TC Pro
	    does in fact work with the Fusion Forty, but it's of little
	    consequence to me, since I'm very satisfied with the reliability
	    and performance of the AdSCSI.

	3.  I had to pull the GVP Series II RAM-only board from my machine.
	    No great loss here since the GVP unit uses the same SIMMs that
	    the Fusion Forty uses.  RCS claims that this device is a
	    definite no-no with the Fusion Forty.

REVIEW

	This review is based on a Fusion Forty received during the summer of
1992.  RCS has since changed their design, and I will try to incorporate
this information into my review.

	RCS is a fairly small company in Quebec, Canada.  In the course
of my purchasing my Fusion Forty, I got to know some of their technical
people very well, and I hope my experience with the Fusion Forty will help
all of you out there.

	When I bought my Fusion Forty, RCS was offering a deal to US Amiga
user group members.  They were offering a substantial saving at the time,
and their 68040 board was $600 cheaper than GVP's 50Mhz 68030 board (on the
mail order market).  I bought it with no RAM installed, since I already had
four 1x9 meg, 70ns SIMMs which I intended to install onto the board.  Please
note that buying the Fusion Forty from RCS directly results in a 6-8 week
wait if you live in the USA.

	Most people know that the 68040 increases the performance standard
set by the Motorola 68000 quite dramatically.  Upon arrival, I carefully
installed the single board into my machine.  Following all the instructions
exactly, I booted up my machine in its native 68000 mode, and proceeded to
install the custom software which recognizes the expansion RAM on the Fusion
Forty board.  Upon reboot, everything seemed normal.  The computer came up
quite normally, and I initiated the installation program on RCS's supplied
disk.  As soon as my computer tried to write to the hard drive, the machine
froze.  To make a long story short, I needed a new Gary chip and a new hard
drive controller.  I was sorry to lose my IVS Trumpcard Pro because I believe
it is one of the fastest hard drive controllers available on the Amiga
market.

	After I got all the parts necessary to get the Fusion Forty working
again, I followed the instructions yet again, and and the installation went
through without any problems.  

	Now comes the good part.  The Fusion Forty is a real speed demon in
terms of raw computing power.  My estimates (based on comparisons with a
friend's A3000) imply that a Fusion Forty-equipped A2000 is somewhere
between 2 and 4 times faster than an A3000/25.  This is for real
applications, not benchmark programs.

	And programs which use the FPU are even faster.  My calculations
estimate somewhere between 2 to 10 times faster than an A3000/25.  

What the heck, I'll include a couple of  benchmarks:

	Benchmark	Amiga 3000		Fusion Forty equipped 2000
	-------------------------------------------------------------------
	BeachBall	1.0			2.9 times faster
	InstTest	1.0			2.75 times faster
	FMath		1.0			4.5 times faster

	NOTE:  All of the above tests were taken from actual data from AIBB
	       version 4.65 with the 68040's copyback mode on.  If copyback
	       mode is off, and the caches are on, then cut the Fusion Forty
	       figures in half.

	The Fusion Forty also increased my hard drive performance quite a
bit.  After doing some quick tests, these were the results.

	PROCESSOR		READ 		WRITE		SCAN
	---------------------------------------------------------------------
	68000			502k/sec	320k/sec	96 files/sec
	68040 (non-copyback)	980k/sec	784k/sec	280 files/sec
	68040 (copyback)	1.3meg		833k/sec	466 files/sec

	NOTE:  All the above tests were performed using 512k buffers on a
	       Quantum 120LPS and an ICD AdSCSI hard drive controller.

	Surprisingly, the Fusion Forty also increased the video speed of my
machine, according to the AIBB WritePxl benchmark, which reported it to be
equal to that of an A3000/25.

	The main problem with the Fusion Forty, as well as any other 68040
based accelerator, is compatibility.  All of my productivity programs work
fine (DPaint III, DPaint IV, WordPerfect, Sculpt-Animate, PageStream 2.21,
GNU Emacs, AmigaVision, etc.), but most older games and Euro-demos don't
work.  Star Control, Eye of the Beholder I and II, and most Sierra games do
work, so no big loss.  Also note that the large majority of productivity
programs work very well in `copyback' mode.  

DOCUMENTATION

	The Fusion Forty came with just a 4-page flyer on how to install the
hardware.  The rest of the documentation came on the supplied installation
disk.  I was rather disappointed with the content of the documentation as it
appeared that much was lacking.  More could have been written on the 68040
chip, but the files seemed to concentrate more on incompatible hardware.

LIKES AND DISLIKES

	I'm very pleased with the Fusion Forty.  As a CSI major, I spend a
good deal of time on the computer.  Add that to the fact that I co-operate a
small graphics company and need the computer to be on for a good 4-8 hours
daily (sometimes to do only raytracing).  Since got the new Gary chip and
hard drive controller, I have had no problems with the accelerator.  I never
use the hardware switch in the back as I really don't play games (any more).

	My only dislike about the Fusion Forty is the documentation, as
explained above.

BUGS

	This is not really a bug since it occurs only to me (I've posted my
problem on Usenet).  My hard-drive occasionally stalls at bootup.  By
stalling I mean that the drive light goes on indefinitely and the computer
gives me a gray screen.  I suspect that this is caused by my switching hard
drive controllers but not yet reformatting the drive (thank god for RDB!).
Anyways, a couple of ctrl-a-a's usually do the trick....

VENDOR SUPPORT

	Vendor support is excellent.  Not only do they promptly answer
questions, but also they'll even call you back :)

ADDENDUM

	Lastly, I would like to add that the Fusion Forty has changed
slightly since I bought mine.  They have added a Plug-n-Go board which
allows for hardware copying of ROM to RAM (for faster ROM routine access).
Originally, the software would boot up the machine, copy the ROM to RAM,
give a "Fusion Forty Installed" screen, and reboot again from the ROM in RAM.
It no longer does this.  The Plug-n-Go board is a $50 (US) upgrade for
Fusion Forty owners, and is available directly from RCS.  I have not upgraded
as I don't have the money or need.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

	This review is freely distributable.

---

   Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews
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