Microcode Solutions
(last updated September 4, 2011)
Early History
Best known for producing the Fusion emulator for Windows, Microcode Solutions was founded on August 24, 1996 by Jim Drew and Joe Fenton. Drew had worked from 1985 to 1995 for a company called “Utilities Unlimited International” (formerly Megasoft), and together with Joe Fenton produced EMPLANT, a Macintosh emulator for the Amiga.
In August of 1995 Utilities Unlimited International went bankrupt. Drew has stated that “since together, Joe and I did *everything* (except write paychecks), it [made] sense for us to try to form a new company ourselves.” 1)
Early Products
- Ace, a freeware Atari 8 bit emulator for the Amiga. A download is here.
- WACKE an Atari 8 bit emulator for Macintosh. Registration cost five dollars. It was no longer listed for sale as of 1999. Joe Fenton later released the emulator as freeware on his personal site.
- FUSION was Microcode's primary Amiga product, a 68K Macintosh emulator for the Amiga. Unlike EMPLANT, this emulation was purely software. It did not require a hardware card, just a ROM image. Retailing of the emulator was supported by Blittersoft (now defunct).
FUSION PC
A PC port of Fusion was released in July 1998. Jim Drew has said that he hated the PC then, but “knew the market was big.” Indeed, in the two years that followed, the demo of the emulator was downloaded three million times.2)
In May 2000, Fusion PC was sold to Emulators, Inc., developer of SoftMac, a competing emulator.3) Drew stated that he couldn't concentrate on developing new products at the same time as supporting old products.
iFusion (Fusion PPC)
In April of 2001, Microcode released iFusion, an emulator of the PPC Macintosh for the Amiga. At the time (and also prior to release of iFusion) Microcode promised a PPC emulator for Windows. This was not released. iFusion Amiga, Microcode's final product, was sold in 2002 to a publisher called Virtual Programming Limited. That company is no longer selling the emulator.
Present
Microcode Solutions is inactive. The company name exists as a label for Jim Drew's technology consulting business. 4)