Masjsta's A500 Vampire

[spaceman88]

I see the A500 Vampire is up to $888.83 (CDN$) with about a day and a half left. Someone really wants one and/or they are throwing a little extra in for "a good cause". Kipper2k should put one up next...

[Marcin1982]

I see the A500 Vampire is up to $888.83 (CDN$) with about a day and a half left. Someone really wants one and/or they are throwing a little extra in for "a good cause". Kipper2k should put one up next...

sick people

[Acill]

If they want to throw money at it, let em. Its way more than I think an A500 deserves put into it though.

[curtis]

Chief,

I'm with you on this one.

Yes, I would like one.

No, I'll be hanged if I'll drop that much into an A500.

[omnicron10]

I think the sales that are on Ebay right now from the actual design team are fine. If people want to pay a lot of money to be the first few to have the Vampire II before the production is spun up, then let them.  It helps the team fund the Apollo projects so they don't fade away!

[magnetic]

First of all guys, what someone wants to do with something they possess is not up to US. If they want to sell things for high prices thats on them. Considering its the vampire team themselves according to rumor have you guys thought about maybe they are using these funds to finance production? Not only that they deserve every penny they get!

[psxphill]

If people want to pay a lot of money to be the first few to have the Vampire II before the production is spun up, then let them.  It helps the team fund the Apollo projects so they don't fade away!

I don't care about the price people are paying on ebay for them, but the price of the production units appears to be on an upward trajectory. So by the time they start shipping in greater numbers, that ebay price might be a real steal.

[gertsy]

First of all guys, what someone wants to do with something they possess is not up to US. If they want to sell things for high prices thats on them. Considering its the vampire team themselves according to rumor have you guys thought about maybe they are using these funds to finance production? Not only that they deserve every penny they get!

+1

[Crom00]

The current Vampire 500 has the same feature set as the V2 600 with the addition of an IDE controller. They were operating below cost. Now they have some breathing room. I expect the standalone versions on the way to cost more but they will be bristling with features. For $800 Apollo Team would make a super system

[Crom00]

I don't care about the price people are paying on ebay for them, but the price of the production units appears to be on an upward trajectory. So by the time they start shipping in greater numbers, that ebay price might be a real steal.

hahaha! I don't price creep is in the future of the Apollo team offerings. They were simply operating at a loss. And the cash that come in funds, Vampire 1200 , Phoenix and Standalone. The amount of work being done is staggering to witness first hand. They are writing processor cores from scratch and squeezing every bit of performance out of each FPGA gate.

I think it's hilarious how 68k is panned as dead platform and here comes Apollo Team out of no where and accomplish so much in a short space of time.

[psxphill]

hahaha! I don't price creep is in the future of the Apollo team offerings. They were simply operating at a loss.

I understand that they were operating at a loss & are now increasing their price to cover the cost, that is fine. But the official price has already increased.

I think it's hilarious how 68k is panned as dead platform and here comes Apollo Team out of no where and accomplish so much in a short space of time.

Such a short time? Vampire has been going for years and Apollo years before that. When people say 68k is dead they mean it in the same way that the Ford Model T is dead. Sure you'll get people keeping them running, but it's a labour of love rather than taking on the industry. They can probably make money out of 68k like Jens Schoenfield does, but not like Intel/ARM/Motorola does.

[Crom00]

Such a short time? Vampire has been going for years and Apollo years before that. [/QUOTE

Vampire 1 came out in 2013, used an open core. Vampire 2 benefited from previous work done for Natami... another can of worms.

Yep it's all essentially homebrew with 2 guys on hardware and a couple of heavy hitters unpaid core dev and some upaid testers. Hardware done at cost until the price increase and core dev is free.

Not exactly Amiga, Commodore, Newtek, or GVP by a longshot. So with that in mind I try to be supportive and not complain too much unless something really outlandish happens due to all the comp work being done on this project. Is a $100 price increase outlandish, some would say so. I don't think so.

[Crom00]

Hopefully Vampire and projects like it will inspire growth in the Amiga scene.

[Crom00]

I understand that they were operating at a loss & are now increasing their price to cover the cost, that is fine. But the official price has already increased.


Ok and I don't think it will increase unless future versions benefit from more features.
From what I have seen they are developing solutions to maximize every penny spent for future iterations. They appear to respect both classic hardware and standalone enthusiasts in future projects.

I have a test vampire2 500 on the way that does 140/150 mips as standard.....150 MIPS.... A have an A4k that does 18 mips. There is no comparison...! So I try not to hassle them too much. Also other developers run a few hundred units at each production run and take months if not years to develop so I can't get too critical of them either. I never in my wildest dreams though I would see such developments.

[psxphill]

Ok and I don't think it will increase unless future versions benefit from more features.

And as there are a lot of missing features and they are talking about charging for new features then sure.

I never in my wildest dreams though I would see such developments.

Why not? They are the only people doing amiga fpga accelerators right now, but it's certainly not unthinkable that the fpgaarcade/mist etc would lead to accelerators.

It's cool sure, but don't get sucked in thinking they were the only ones that could do this & 150 mips? Great for an Amiga, but a raspberry pi still blows it away at a fraction of the price. It's a product with a very small audience, so they'll never get good price breaks. Which is unfortunate.

An A1200 accelerator coupled with a "not an A1200" motherboard from Jens would go on my wish list, but it appears we're even further away from that happening.