Vampire 600?

[magnetic]

Guys
Majsta no longer manufactures the boards. His old list is pointless ( I was on it and never heard back as well) Kipper2k has made some (I have one see my sig) but not sure how many he has left or will continue to produce. This board is recommended for advanced users only.

* I will be creating a semi in-depth review of the board on aorg soon*

[magnetic]

The TG68 68000 core and plenty of fast memory are enough to make the accelerator a good value. If that is the only expectation and there are no problems with the clip on part, then there is a good chance of a satisfied customer.

 

I had zero problems with installing the board and it fitting well to my 600. right from the box it clicked right on and has been very reliable with the V .1 (68k core). There is a reset bug though if you warm reboot alot of times the RAM dissapears.

@ Majsta

Thanks for chiming in on the thread. Many of us support you and your work and will continue to in the future. i have a couple of questions if you dont mind

1. Will the Phoenix core eventually work on vampire 600? If so what kind of performance can we expect?

2. is there anyone debugging and improving the v1.0 core (020) ? I really really need the extra ram and the 020 for certain things im doing with this machine. Having said this the .1 core (68k@80mhz) will be more than enough with the 5mb for most casual amiga hobby guys but for me i'm doing digitizing/animation/music with it and really want the 020 (even better 030+)

Thanks for your work.

As far as Kipper2k goes hes a great amigan and a real asset to the North American amiga community. He is overwhelmed and busy but reliable and friendly.

[magnetic]

Let's answer few questions now:

Phoenix core will be sent to all Vampire 600 users. Problem was in the FPGA I used because it is too small, only 8K LE and that was the only reason why apollo-team had to slowdown to shrink each part of the code. Performance, I have the values but let's keep that as a surprise, let's say that A600 will be your primary Amiga

Core based on TG68(without cache) with lot more memory is easy to build, maybe half an hour but I stopped development of that core waiting for Phoenix. Also because thunderstorms in my city I have lost most of my equipment and need lot of time to recover to start work on the project again. Let's say that my USB blaster cable died and that I repaired it using parts from broken A600 motherboard, amazing

Reset bug is the real problem, and as much I tried to solved it with the code I didn't resolve the problem. It can't be solved on that version of Vampire just because I made a mistake in designing it. At the time I didn't know the fact that Amiga can perform reset by using keyboard keys(soft reset), imagine If I had that info i could fix that problem easily. So now I was thinking to redesign the board but then that will not be fair for the ppl who have first version.  

Majsta

It would be very valuable for current users to use the .1 core with more ram. After I flashed to 1.0 core for testing (im getting a review of the board together) I tried to install os 3.1 onto a drive installer crashes. So i'm probably going to flash back to .1 core. I really really need the 020 and ram how long is it before Phoenix is ready?  Why is it that the 1.0 core has troubles because the .1 core worked fine for me with almost everything I tried. *(allthough exiting Octamed 5 for some reason froze the amiga like 2 in 10 times) Sucks about the reset bug, but no big deal as amigas boot in seconds But kind of weird not to be able to do the 3 finger salute! btw I really enjoy reading your posts. i sent a link to some admin friends about your site getting hacked and they got the biggest kick out of it!

[magnetic]

Yes.

Its a crazy as having a Ferrari in the USA, right?
A fast car in a country with a speed limit around 80 miles.
But you know what, there are many people enjoying a Ferrari still.

HAHAH in LA alot of ferraris and super cars with nowhere to drive them. Especially when LA is traffic 80% of the time. And the avg speed limit in usa is no where near 80 more like 60 (a mean of alot of 55limit states and 65 limit)

[magnetic]

Hi Igor,


The performance looks very promising - our sniff tests indicate roughly a
performance of 10 times of a 68030 @ 50 MHz system.

Wow! that is just amazing. I cant wait. How will the stability be? Also will it emulate an MMU and FPU as certain software that im trying to use requires one or both of these?

[magnetic]

The "power" version is here.
The card is currently in testing.

Is the power version a 68k plug in for a500/1000/2000? Is there an onboard fast ide controller? Im thinking of building a Vlab Motion setup with an a2000 but it really needs FPU and MMU to run right..

[magnetic]

Good specs biggun. It prolly wont fit in cdtv the tolerance is very low for the top case but the board does look pretty flat... can you answer about FPU/mmu please?

[magnetic]

umm unless you have a heavily modified rx7 there is no way on God's green earth that its faster than the Ferrari. Sorry

[magnetic]

thats what i thought even then not sure if your claim is accurate Anyway lets not hijack the thread bro

[magnetic]

From the little I know the instabilities spoken about are in the V 1.0 core (020 with dual cache) and something with the way the cache works. The later V 0.1 core (68000@87mhz 5mb ram) was pretty stable and compatible for me.

[magnetic]

The planned release of the Core is August.
And we so far all looks good that we will be able to launch as planned.

.

Should I bother to re-flash to V 0.1 core or wait for Phoenix? In other words will you release it sooner or later? Also, i'm willing to beta test phoenix core for you I run software alot of amigans dont run like music and graphics apps.

[magnetic]

Sounds good.
Maybe you like to visit our IRC channel?
We can chat about beta-tester options there.


http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=apollo-team

Hey big gun. I'll try to catch up on the irc when are you guys there? I have a couple of things to discuss from my testing with .1 and 1.0 cores as well.

[magnetic]

Rob
There are very few ppl running CD32 setups. In north america they are very rare. ideal target to me is 500/2000 as there are so many worldwide. It would be awesome to have an a3000 with AGA! (or better my a600 w/ aga lol)

[magnetic]

Majsta

Sweet! I'll try the .2 core tonight or tomorrow and report back.

@ Big Gun i'll try to meet up on irc but with time diff its pretty crazy

[magnetic]

Hi someone requested new core with TG68.C MC68000 based, but with more memory, it is on my site so please test it.

It is build in just 2 hours, all from my head because I lost most of my codes. Core is not so fast but according to my test stable.
I m sorry for waiting but this this year was not so nice for me and that's why I was away. But I ll explain everything on my site when I found the time.

Also in this version (0.2) memory allocation is strange but I don't want to start talking about that because I afraid that this will bring new discussion between me and BigGun hahahhahaa

Majsta

Ok so I uploaded the v 0.2 core and it seems pretty good! Thanks for posting it up. Interesting how the Ram is configured. ShowConfig shows 16mb fast expansion and 4mb fast expansion and 1mb fast expansion for a total of 21mb! Yay! And good news, the fast ram is now reset proof! I dont know if its because you changed the memory addresses but the whole 21mb survives a reboot now. Tested multiple times. Here is a report of some software

Demos tried (non whdload all original exe)

State of the Art (works)
BoogieTown (works)
9 Fingers (works)
Knoppix by DCS (Works)

Software all working

Octamed 5 (from floppy)
Mind Eye (crashes on exit though)
Delitracker 2
Music X 1.1
Disk Salv 4
DJ PT1210 Software (Akira vs Hoffman)

Software Not working

Octamed 5 (from hard drive) for some reason works from floppy and not from HD?

My cf reader broke, i'm waiting for a new one to come in then ill install more software and report more results.

Looks like V 0.2 Core is pretty good. However, I'm really dying to see the Phoenix core as I'd like to use AmigaAmp to playback some mp3s on this a600 and also to use certain 020+ software.