Vampire, Gotek, 68000, misteries, doubts, questions...

[flaviosr]

Dear All,

I am trying to build a high tech Amiga, so:
° I have modified a tank mouse to make it optical with the "new" kit (great!!!);
° I have put a Gotek floppy drive and I have a question: I have tried different USB key and some work, some do not, and others sometimes work and sometimes do not so, is this normal or am I missing something? There are limits in USB key capacity?
° when I removed the CPU to put the Vampire I found an Hitachi CPU, code HD68HC000P12, a 12.5 MHz one: is this normal? I have a rev. 6A mobo (see photo), is it possible to see from the mobo the speed of the system? I would not like to discover that the mobo have been hacked and it is working @ 12.5 MHz so that I could fridge the Vampire!!!
° I have tried different ADF and some do not work (for example if I put Workbench 1.3 I receive some errors during startup even if Workbench starts): am I right and Vampire is not 100% compatible with "original" Amigas (I am supposing not even 90% compatible...);
° I have put a 4 Gb CF and I cannot make it recognised from the HD program... the strange think is that I forced Workbench 3.1 to partition it and it did the job (one partition of 8 Mb and all the rest in another partition). If I enter the partitioning program... again I cannot modify it. Some suggestions?
° [LAST] apart connecting a CD drive to the Vampire IDE channel does exist another way? For example using the MicroSD of the Vampire as a CD in some way...

Forgive me!

Thank you for your help

[flaviosr]

Depends what you mean by "original" Amigas and how you choose to quantify compatibility. Amigas came with a variety of different CPUs at different speeds, with different memory configurations, chip sets, expansions, operating system versions (both firmware and software), filesystems etc. Each variation introduces possibilities for incompatibilities, in that regard the Vampire is no different to any other upgrade. The Vampire adds a LOT to a basic A500 or A600 so the potential areas for poorly written software to break are considerable however the Apollo team have done a lot to minimise these and continue to make improvements (using alternative kickstarts has recently been demonstrated as a future option). The vampire is also the only option to add compatibility with AGA software to the non-AGA Amigas in the future.

I meant classic A500 games, like Gods, Barbarian and so on.
I read that the Vampire is a pumped (in speed) 68000 and not a 68020/030/040/060 emulation.
But he uses kickstart 3.1 and this could be a problem, and I read that in the future it would be possible to use different kickstart!
I supposed not to have problems since I use WHDLoad with different CPUs (68030, 040, 060) and I never had problems but perhaps WHDLoad has a bit of emulation... and at the moment I am not able to check WHDLoad on my Vampire...
I think I have to think about adding an internal slimDVD!
I at the very beginning with my Vampire and perhaps my email has been written too early, without so much experience from my side!

[flaviosr]

Keep in mind that the Vampire has a custom Kickstart image in flash memory and the ROM is not used ever.  Currently it's 3.1 compatible but a 1.3 compatible fallback mode might soon be available .

Sometimes, without any clear rule, my A500 starts with kickstart 1.3 (the original one)!!! I have read that it would be better to remove the original kickstart... I would try but I am a bit afraid to ruin something...