Vampire 600 boards for the Amiga 600 on the way

[mikej]

@Iggylike I said before that soldering technique is so controversial and I suspected that people will start talking about that on forums. But, for the devices that are not made for human soldering is is the only fast and safe way.

What would worry me is the fact no anti-static precautions are being taken.
Masking tape! At least get an anti-static mat.

The more normal way to do prototype production is to get a stencil made (30-40 USD laser cut). You can actually get standard stencils for tqfps etc.

Squeeze solder paste through, pop the chip on and heat with a reflow gun.
You get perfect results and no bent pins.
/MikeJ

[AmmoJammo]

Static is a good point too... but looking at the way it was soldered, I doubt he'd be too worried about that... lol

Static, and heat damage are not immediately evident, the item may work, it might work for weeks, even months or years, and then one day, it just stops working for no apparent reason...

I am a bit confused about how he considers this to be "the only fast and safe way" I can't think of a less safe method!

[majsta]

What can I say than there is no single problem is soldering like this. FPGA is not overheated and soldering job looks like machine did it. If someone decide to cancel pre-order less work for me and more regret for someone later To tell you the truth I m not so happy because so much orders. I have boards soldered like this for testing purpose who are in working order for past 2 years. Basically this type of FPGA is hard to destroy if he can be detected with JTAG connection it works. After soldering detailed testing procedure taking place in 3 stages. One for testing signals from original CPU just like regular Logic Analyzer, one for testing Amiga bus with fake CPU, more complex one have 3 CPU's inside for testing memory with LFSR.

[amiga-penn-wchester]

There is no problem soldering like this (soldering along the pins and then wicking it up),  I've done it plenty of times and if you use a 15w heat source, you aren't going to damage anything.  

This is a perfectly good way to do a short run of SMT boards.  I've done it myself, never had a problem with it.  Continue on.

[persia]

So anyone care to explain what a Vampire board does?

[NovaCoder]

So anyone care to explain what a Vampire board does?

It's an FPGA based accelerator for A600's.   It can 'impersonate' either an 68000 or 68020.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

So anyone care to explain what a Vampire board does?

http://www.majsta.com/

[psxphill]

http://www.majsta.com/

I'm hoping hooking up with Apollo doesn't derail it.
 
From Apollo-core.com "Fully User-Code Compatible with MC68000"
 
Sounds good, but hidden behind that lies the answer to "so what is it incompatible with?"

[wawrzon]

all fine and well. its really exciting news. but with fpga softcores in mind what about fpu?

[ddniUK]

Is Apollo core linked to the natami team?

[wawrzon]

there is no natami team as such for what i know. apollo is a softcore by former natami contributors, gunnar in particular. i dont know who else.

[majsta]

We can say that Apollo was build from the knowledge learned in Natami project. Also FPU is done long time ago but I m not so shore will it fit in Vampire 600 board but for other Amigas we will have it for shore. My goal is that we have basic version for A600 because lack of AGA. Maybe there will be some coldfire instructions also but in month or two we will know where we stand.

[wawrzon]

@majsta

i think for starters and for a600 in particular a limited softcore without fpu is enough. good news though that the apollo features fpu. im not sure what would be the gain of adding coldfire instructions. are there any vector instructions or what? by all means do not create another incompatible target software would have to be compiled for. the different versions for different 68k cpus are already annoyance enough. we need unity and common goals, not another split.

[matthey]

i think for starters and for a600 in particular a limited softcore without fpu is enough. good news though that the apollo features fpu.

The current FPU is sparse like the ColdFire FPU but with fp immediates and maybe pre-decrement and post-increment for FMOVEM. I would like to see a more robust and 68k compatible FPU. Some think an SIMD will replace the FPU as happened with the x86/x64. Some of that happened because of limitations of the x86 FPU and it's sharing of the registers with the SIMD. In our case, the FPU is needed to do the more common double precision operations that compilers need as an SIMD would be single precision float only.

 are there any vector instructions or what?

There is an SIMD unit but it's also not complete.

 im not sure what would be the gain of adding coldfire instructions. by all means do not create another incompatible target software would have to be compiled for. the different versions for different 68k cpus are already annoyance enough. we need unity and common goals, not another split.

The ColdFire and other CPU enhancements are mostly aimed at improving code density and modernizing functionality. Defining a new ISA also allows some old instructions and addressing modes that slow a modern CPU to be deprecated so slow CPU traps/exceptions are avoided in new code. The 68000 or 68020 would still be a compatible base and the more common compiler target. There isn't much point in the mini-Apollo (Phoenix) CPU having CF instructions as there will be no ISA to support them but they are practically free. Maybe some support code will be able to make use of them.

Majsta's future hardware creations (probably for AGA) will likely have a significantly larger fpga. It's a tight squeeze fitting a fully pipelined CPU with caches into a Cyclone 2. A larger fpga would allow for a much more powerful CPU with FPU and SIMD.

[psxphill]

Maybe there will be some coldfire instructions also but in month or two we will know where we stand.

I'd rather have full 68060 compatibility (supervisor/user/mmu/fpu) even if that is less efficient. I'm assuming this isn't going to be open source so that someone else could adapt it to fit this requirement?

[Hattig]

I'm hoping hooking up with Apollo doesn't derail it.
 
From Apollo-core.com "Fully User-Code Compatible with MC68000"
 
Sounds good, but hidden behind that lies the answer to "so what is it incompatible with?"

I wouldn't buy a Vampire A600 based upon future cores, especially one promising the world. On the other hand, I wish them the best of luck in their cut-down Phoenix core for the Vampire A600 - a 100 MIPS 68k A600 would be devastating.

But it is working currently with TG68K at a few MIPS, possibly even over 10 eventually. So buy it if that is good enough for you now.