Subject: REVIEW: GVP G-Force 040 Combo
From: [email-masked] (Metin Savignano)
Date: 25 Oct 1995 01:19:25 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

	GVP G-Force 040 Combo

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	An accelerator board for A2000, featuring:

	 - Motorola 68040 CPU (with a working MMU), clocked at 33 MHz.
	 - a Series-II DMA SCSI host adapter on board.
	 - an additional serial port.
	 - an additional parallel port.

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

	Please note:  This board was originally designed and sold by Great
Valley Products.  GVP has ceased to exist, and the rights for this and other
products have been bought by the German company MTec.  However, this is a
review on the original board by GVP.  In the meantime, MTec has started
advertising for the GVP products, but as far as I know, they are not yet
sold.  I was not possible either to find out if they are going to produce
the original boards or modified versions of them; but since they advertise
the G-Force at additional clock speeds, I suspect that they implement minor
changes.  The G-Force 040, for example, is being advertised as "up to" 40
MHz clock speed, whereas the original board is being clocked at 33 MHz.

The following is the address of the vendor MTec:

	Name:		MTec Hardware Design
	Address:	Horster Str. 297
			D-46238 Bottrop
			Germany

	Telephone:	+49-2041-4656
	FAX:		+49-2041-4660

LIST PRICE

	The G-Force 040 for the A2000 is currently being advertised by MTec
as "starting from DM 999" (approximately US$ 680).  MTec was not able to
give me more specific information.

DEMO VERSION

	None.

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	HARDWARE

		An Amiga 2000.

	SOFTWARE

		AmigaOS 2.04 or higher.

COPY PROTECTION

	None. (Unless you think of the board itself as a big dongle.)

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

	Amiga 2000 Rev. 4.4 and Amiga 2000 Rev. 6.2
	Additional boards were:
		Vector Connection and GVP I/O Extender multi I/O boards
		Masoboshi MC702 and GVP Series-II SCSI host adapters
		Picasso-II graphics board

	AmigaOS versions used: 2.04 and 3.1

	RAM: 1 MB Chip mem, 2 MB on the GVP Series-II, else no additional
	fast mem.

	SCSI devices: Quantum LPS52S, Quantum LPS525LPS, IBM OEM 0662S12, HP
	35480 DAT.

INSTALLATION

	Several jumpers have to be checked first, according to the manual.
However, usually the board should come configured correctly.

	Installing the board in the CPU slot is a bit more complicated than
in other accelerator products, because of the additional serial and parallel
ports.  You have to be careful to loosen enough screws on the back of the
Amiga, so the board will not have to be bent when plugging it in its slot.

	If you want to connect external SCSI drives, an additional slot's
cover will have to be replaced by one with an external SCSI port (included).

	Software installation will be performed by the standard Installer.
I did not have any problems with that.  All files were in place afterwards.

THE CPU

	The CPU is a Motorola 68040 with a working MMU, clocked at 33 MHz.
Before the arrival of the 68060, this has been the fastest you could get for
your Amiga.  [MODERATOR'S NOTE: Actually, 40MHz 68040 boards are available
from other vendors. - Dan] No need to say, it still is a roaring fast CPU.
I am running a BBS with two lines with this board, and I hardly notice if or
if not someone is online while I am answering my mail, compiling and testing
programs, and so on.

	Compatibility has never been a problem for me.  Unlike what I have
heard of other 68040 boards, I have had no problems with any of my
software.  I even have the feeling that my Amiga is more stable than it was
before.  However, I must say that I hardly run any games on this Amiga.

	The fact that the G-Force is equipped with a special circuit in
order to load the ROM into the much faster 32 bit RAM on board, allows the
MMU to be free for any other task it could perform (like virtual memory).
The other advantage is that a Guru will not cause the machine to hang with a
black screen, like the way this usually happens when using CPU FastROM, but
they will correctly appear, allowing the Amiga to re-boot after some seconds
when using AmigaOS 3.1.  This is certainly important for unattended systems.

THE RAM

	In order to be able to use the CPU at full speed, it is naturally
necessary to use faster RAM.  The G-Force 040 can hold up to 4 SIMMs, either
4 or 16 MB each.  Theoretically, this allows for up to 64 MB.  Practically,
RAM is the point where some problems come in.

	First of all, the G-Force 040 requires special SIMMs, having only 64
pins (PS/2 SIMMs have 72).  These SIMMs are not at all readily available, so
usually, it is necessary to buy them directly from MTec, formerly GVP.  This
leads to higher prices.  At some times, the price for a GVP SIMM was 50%
higher than the price for a PS/2 SIMM! I do hope that MTec will redesign the
board, so the new ones will work with PS/2 SIMMs.

	The other problem is, that you cannot mix 4 MB and 16 MB SIMMs.
This means that you have to sell your 4 MB SIMMs, if you want to use more
than 16 MB.  Even though 16 MB appears quite enough for me (after all, we
are not running Windows on our Amiga ;), there are certainly applications
that require more RAM.

	The third thing worth mentioning is, that you can only use the
68040's burst mode when all 4 memory slots are filled.  This means, that you
can only use burst mode with 16 (4x4) or 64 (4x16) MB.  Burst mode is said
to increase performance by approximately 10%.  However, even without burst
mode, the G-Force 040 was still fast enough for me!

THE SCSI HOST ADAPTER

	The onboard SCSI host adapter is extremely delicious! It gives you a
lot of benefits.  First of all, this is a real GVP Series-II SCSI host
adapter, featuring real DMA and (with the new Guru ROM driver) synchronous
transfers.  Second, because it is onboard, it can transfer data at very high
rates directly to the onboard RAM, without the need to bother the Zorro-II
bus.  This fact gives you an extremely high total throughput, increasing the
overall performance of your Amiga noticeably.  SCSISpeed gave me transfer
rates of up to 3.8 MB/Sec.  Unfortunately, I do not have a faster SCSI
device...

	A common problem with GVP's SCSI host adapters was found in the
G-Force 040, too: no termination power is fed to the external SCSI
connector.  This makes it necessary to use active termination on external
devices, otherwise the SCSI bus will not work.  Even though it works well
with active termination, the problem arises that you cannot connect an
external device and leave it switched off, because then it will obviously be
unable to feed termination power to the bus.  In my case, the external
device is a DAT streamer which I use only for backups, so most of the time
it would be absolutely unnecessary to leave it on.

	As I have mentioned, this is a common problem with GVP's SCSI host
adapters.  According to what I have found out, GVP left out a diode and a
fuse on all their boards that would the job, even though most, if not all,
boards are already prepared for it.  The place where to put the diode and
the fuse is already printed on the board!  This means that you can solder
them onto the board by yourself quite easily.  On the other hand, this also
means that GVP saved approximately $2 in production...

	However, this hardware modification, together with Ralph Babel's new
Guru ROM, turns the SCSI host adapter into a true SCSI-2 host adapter, also
featuring the fast synchronous transfer mode!

THE SERIAL PORT

	The G-Force 040 comes with an additional serial port onboard which
is said to support up to 625,000 Baud.  However, this was not true with my
board.  My board's serial port supported only a Baud rate of 57600.  If I
tried to lock my modem at a higher rate, it either would not work at all (no
data transmission), or it would work, but when checking the real Baud rate, I
found that it was still only 57600 Baud.  I found this to be quite annoying,
indeed!

	Unfortunately, I have not been able to find out, if other G-Force
040 users have the same problem, or if this is an isolated problem, nor did
I find out, if this is a hardware or a software (device) problem.  I know of
one G-Force 040 user who did not have any problems at all, so this problem
appears to be non-typical.

	I am sorry that I cannot give definite information on this
particular detail.

THE PARALLEL PORT

	The G-Force 040 also features an additional parallel port.  There is
not much to say about this port.  I tried it, and it worked.  It seems to be
compatible by 100% with the original port.  This port is said to be faster
than the original one, but I could not check that out, since my printer is
still by far slower than any parallel port.

	A jumper on the board allows you to choose between a truly IBM
compatible or a truly Amiga compatible parallel port (i.e., if pin
14 of the interface does or doesn't supply +5 V).

THE SOFTWARE

	Some software utilities are supplied with the G-Force 040.  There
are some programs that will display details on your hardware (similar to
SysInfo) and the like, but I will not go into detail about them.  However,
the software that controls several aspects of the board should be mentioned.

	Prefs programs for the serial and the parallel port enable you to
set Baud rate, handshake and all the other parameters.  Additionally, for
programs that do not access PRT: for example, a patch can be added to
redirect all accesses meant for the original port to GVP's port.

	Another utility allows you to copy the ROM into the fast 32 bit RAM,
using a special circuitry on the board.  This allows the ROM to be copied to
RAM without the help of the MMU.  Therefore, the MMU can be used for other
things, like virtual memory.

	The SCSI utility allows to switch on or off Disconnect for certain
devices.  This is useful, since some devices do not correctly reply to
disconnect requests. In addition, the SCSI utility for the Guru ROM allows
to enable or disable any SCSI feature (like synchronous transfers or parity
checking) specifically for each device.

	The serial and parallel ports behave just like those on the GVP I/O
Extender.  They even use the same expansion drivers.  This is very
convenient, if you already own that board, since this will simply add two
more ports to chose from with your existing software.

DOCUMENTATION

	My board came with both, an English and a German manual.  The
English manual originally contained some errors in the description of the
jumpers, but they had been corrected prior to delivery.  The manual contains
65 pages, and is quite detailed.  All in all, it gives a lot of helpful
information, and I did not miss any important issues.  It should be
understandable for both beginners and experts.  The only misinformation I
found was about the external SCSI bus.  According to the manual, this should
work flawlessly.  Not a word about the termination power problem.

LIKES

	Of course, I do like a lot how fast and easy my Amiga now is.
Before I got the G-Force 040, I owned a Commodore A2630 (68030 at 25 MHz).
The speed increase of the CPU is very good, but I especially love the speed
increase in SCSI access, provided by a very fast DMA host adapter that can
directly write into the board's 32 bit RAM.  I also do like the
compatibility of the board.

DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS

	For me, the fact that the board requires special 64 pin SIMMs is a
problem that should be solved by MTec before they re-start production.
Additionally, it would be convenient, if mixing 4MB and 16MB would be
possible.

	The missing diode and fuse that led to problems connecting external
devices is a really annoying misfeature.  This should definitely be fixed.

	Another dislike is that the original fan was very loud.  I had to
replace it with a more silent one.  This may have changed already, though.

COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	I can only compare the G-Force 040 to my former A2630.  Of course,
it is much better, say faster.  I have no experiences with other 68040
boards, so I cannot make a comparison on the same CPU level.

BUGS

	The external SCSI problem is definitely a bug.

VENDOR SUPPORT

	As of now, vendor support is poor.  Currently, the people at MTec
keep telling me that they have no information on the GVP products yet,
because the development is still in the USA.  They forwarded my questions to
the development team in the USA, and they also gave me their fax number.
Even though I have sent an additional fax after a while, I did not hear a
word from them.  The only way to solve the external SCSI problem was to
publically ask for help in the net.  Thanks to those knowing people who are
always ready to help!

	I found it annoying, too, that they advertise for the product, but
were not even able to give exact prices.

WARRANTY

	In Germany, a warranty of six months is requested by law. I have no
information if MTec provides a longer warranty than that.

CONCLUSIONS

	In my opinion, the G-Force 040 is a very good product.  It used to be
too expensive though (around US$ 1500), but MTec obviously decided to get
competitive again, and lowered the prices significantly.  Of course, this is
also due to the fact that 68060 CPUs are beginning to become generally
available, degrading the 68040 to "only" the second fast CPU available for
the Amiga.

	My rating would be 4 stars out of 5.  Once the external SCSI problem
is fixed, and the use of PS/2 SIMMs is possible, I would give it 5 stars out
of 5.

	All in all, I am very happy with this board, and I am glad that I
bought it!

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

	Copyright 1995 by Metin Savignano.  Commercial use of this review not
allowed without the author's permission.
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