Apollo Team announces the Vampire V4

[Pat the Cat]

Whenever the A1200 dies for good, the standalone will keep going since its made out of new components.

Somewhat ironic as back in the early 90s, CBM were full of "SMD will last longer than existing Amigas, it is superior to through hole manufacturing".

Turns out, they were full of garbage saying that. Earlier Amigas are far less susceptible to leaky capacitors.

Longevity is a c-r-a-pshoot when it comes to technology (random dice throw if you don't understand the term).

Are there cases that fit this like the PI cases?

Nothing that can't be designed in advance and tweaked for perfect fit when examples are available to test with.

Expect them, but probably not good idea to manufacture them in advance - limits any final changes to the board design.
 
 

Apollo Team is proud to announce their next generation FPGA device: the Vampire V4.

 
 Whoopee! Good news!

[Pat the Cat]

Are there any old software FPUs that the Vampire could run? Something to simply emulate one or tell the OS and other software there is one even if the ops are slower than potential hardware?

Well, no, is the short answer, although that has always been a possible upgrade for vampires and is a goal for the firmware flash upgrades.
 
 The long answer is "kind of" in that you can get replacement libraries for maths functions which run faster than standard ones, but they don't actually show up as a real FPU so software specifically written for 881/882/040 FPUs still doesn't work with a custom maths library.

[Pat the Cat]

@Pat the Cat
you know about femu right? FPU emulator?
http://forum.apollo-accelerators.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1797

Not exactly "knew". I am aware that FPU support is pencilled in for Vampires but isn't functional currently. EDIT <- Released a week ago, so probably not 100% yet.

Now, to be totally honest, having studied the chips involved, and knowing some of the maths theory, it's a horrible thing to get right.

There is no point in having an inaccurate and untested FPU support. Worse than no support.

Plus, double precision 80 bit is what the hardware could deliver, which is not terribly easy to do even on a current processor. My understanding is, it's one of the key differences between Centrino "budget" processors and real Intel Pentiums...

Note the "My Understanding", this is something I would very much like to see, but I cannot pretend that it is at all easy to implement.

[Pat the Cat]

No need to recompile old apps for no FPU, just use Femu for now or wait for FPU on the V4.

Sounds like a plan.
 
 Can be an issue with some of the old stuff just doing a hardware check for an FPU rather than asking nicely.
 
 Actually some of it doesn't even scan, it just assumes there is an FPU and bombs out if one isn't present. That stuff probably will work fine with Femu.

[Pat the Cat]

Hey, since when does being IT professional mean anything here?

It means something when you actually start earning money from IT, thus, it depends on the individual.

Fondly I remember my first IT lesson at school... old school teacher, learned on computers with round screens that used to be used on radars... George Cantello his name was.

His first words? "The first and ONLY true rule of Information Technology is, you do NOT EVER give away information!

You sell it!" :laughing:
 
 Needless to say, I didn't believe him. Then, now, or at any point in between.

[Pat the Cat]

An incomplete FPU emulation and a bad JPEG implementation working hand in hand. You don't need an FPU for JPEG.

Correct, I used to load and save JPEGs fine on a standard A2000...

... Kolla, where did you get your copy of AdPro from? It should not behave like that...

... although femu is very new, so the problem could lie there. Or perhaps the combination is the source of the error messages.

Sadly you do with Adpro if you do not have a 68000 :-(

WTF? Am I the last Amigan with an original copy? AdPro FPU versions were fine up to and including 68040 based Amigas. Never tried 060.

(deeply puzzled)
 
 Have you the FPU version of AdPro installed? Always included with the install, which defaults to 68000. Use Expert Install to get the FPU version, or drag the icons from floppy to a current install (