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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: looren on January 14, 2021, 09:44:42 AM
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Hi
I'm curious, if anyone knows;
Is it possible to run AmigaOS4 Classic on a 1200 with a Vampire card?
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Short answer: No because OS4 requires a PowerPC CPU.
Longer answer: The aim of the Vampire products is to use FPGA technology to provide their 68'080' design processor, which is backward compatible with the older Amiga 68xxxx series produced by Motorola back in the day. They named it '080' because it has more features & is quicker than the CPU last released in that family, which was the 68060; but it was designed in such a way as to maintain the best backward compatibility possible with physical 68xxxx chips too. So faster, new features and trying to be better in backward compatibility than the actual 68060 was. But still a CISC 68xxxx series CPU, not a RISC PowerPC CPU.
As far as I know, nobody has built a viable FPGA core for the Vampire series which contains a PowerPC variant - or even if it is possible to design a PowerPC core which could run on a Vampire card. Of course I'm happy to be corrected on this point if someone knows better!
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Gryfon; understood,
thank you kindly for elaborating!
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@Gryfon
As far as I know, nobody has built a viable FPGA core for the Vampire series which contains a PowerPC variant - or even if it is possible to design a PowerPC core which could run on a Vampire card.
There's no reason why you couldn't put a PPC core in the Vampire's FPGA but performance would be inadequate for OS4.
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PPC is way too much for the current crop of FPGA's used on the Vampire. Further to this a bigger FPGA could be used to increase the speed of the 68080, the team firmly believes that the 68k range is a better design to begin with so there will never be a PPC Vampire.
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What would be cool though is a vampire card on a PCI card that plugs into a OS4 machine, and then your UAE/emulation could be programmed to use that instead of software emulation.