[UserReview] Vampire V2-128 received and it's just pure p0rn.

[wawrzon]

haha! the vampire uproar reaches org.. welcome!

[wawrzon]

"Considering this is a hobby project where cards are being assembled by a couple of people"
exactly , this is big pain-problem Amiga computer !!

like I remember from half 90 years  non-stop is the same problem , hobby project and wait wait wait for nothing

ppc shark vel sonnet crescendo 7200  super great card ,  but where are this card for buy ? :-)

the same problem for twenty year

and this is main reason why Amiga died

always have to wait for nothing

vampire should be now get for big production ! for many waiting people for that hardware

you may have noticed, that even when some hardware was being on sale in the "official" stores you named, hasnt saved the customers to wait weeks, months or maybe longer for the actual delivery. i think the vampire/apollo team is doing just fine in this comparison and by the way are keeping the price low without the handler margin.

[wawrzon]

@tuko

Nice review and impresive card... the "problem" of this is that there are not enought cards for all with this low production =(

i think that its actually favourable for the users and for the project, that this is an "organic" one, even if it needs some more patience. the product being introduced to public gradually allows enough time for feedback, reconsideration of features and the like.

that there is suddenly so much demand and interest is not the fault of the involved.

[wawrzon]

That accelerator looks awesome! Any reason why it wouldn't work for us ACA500 users? Looking at the layout, might just fit...

why would you want to have both vampire and aca500 built in at the same time?

[wawrzon]

Because the 68k ACA500 is 14mhz and the Vampire isn't.

Looks like Kipper is working on an A500/A2000 acceleraror board, so that'll be nice. Might plug directly into the 68000 socket or 500 version externally?

Thing is, I'm using an ACA500 and ACA1221 outside my Phoenix equipped A1000. Hell of a combo (28mhz 020 works great!), but a Vampire solution, with AGA and super speed would be even better.  

what does 14mhz 68000 or 28mhz clocked 68020 get you, vampire doesnt? i would understand you if you would want to the option to use the genuine onboard 68000/7 cpu for timing/ compatibility reason, but the minor upgrades you mention likely ruin the original timings, some software might rely on, anyway.

[wawrzon]

I second that! I'm so jealous for those getting these. Wish I had an a600 right now!

i think for those who are doomed to wait things may get even better, while others simply may enjoy them earlier.

[wawrzon]

Does it really matter?

simply in case someone was trying to snipe the project from behind a fence because of this. hope they wont dare.

[wawrzon]

Does KingCON newer than 1.5 work? For example 1.8 or 40.x from Cosmos?

is that stable? not to test beta with beta?

I read on the Apollo board, that Gunnar speaks of SAGA - Super AGA. But - will SAGA be AGA compatible? Will it be possible to run old DPaint IV AGA with HAM8 mode on the HDMI output, with plenty of RAM for animation? On the A1200 with old Indivision (mk1), I can run DPaint in nice 1024x768 HAM8 modes, but there is not enough chipram available to do animation at that resolution. Besides, it would be too slow. An implementation on FPGA could be _alot_ faster, and access far more RAM.

will you ever give them even any tiny credit? they have just fulfilled your postulates, in order to have you complaining about something else and painting dark future for the solution, without even knowing, how do they want to take it at. i doubt its motivating. id hate to think you want to disencourage people, even if in doubt it could be achieved under current circumstances.

[wawrzon]

I never ever got any "yes, we are aware and looking at that" from Gunnar regarding my questions

two things: because when you are busy actually doing things, you may tend not to answer to everybody anbd too every questions, especially doubtsand especially if you think things will clarify anyway in course of time. then as you heard, it may be a question of character. personally i hav not had all my questions answered either, but i dont mind so much. its better like this, rather like gunnar was busy to anwer to a number of remerks by certain á bit misinformed individuals flooding his own forum, you know.

make the Apollo core "de facto standard" for all future 68k Amiga software, another licensing circus.

it depends if the community will play along. i think either way it has dis- and advantages. i would simply lean back and watch, working on aros68k in the meantime. dont you enjoy the show any little bit? do admit!

[wawrzon]

Yes, for some reason unclear to me Gunnar considers Jens as "enemy". I don't really know why as he has personally not yet made any business with him. So I can only guess that this is some personal prejustice. I personally haven't had problems with Jens.

are you sure? in public (a1k) he was mostly rather polite to jens, considering how jens (and a number of others) treated him initially. he even invited them to come over for a beer and demo, which i doubt was only for show, but who knows. its rather igor, who dropped few vague remarks, that might be read like you do. however i wouldnt be surprised if there was a littlke bit anymosity on whichever side. i mean, apollo/vampire may affect some business plans around the scene.

[wawrzon]

seems memory access is getting at how fast it may actually become theoretically. great.

[wawrzon]

@kolla

Regardless of knowledge of MMU, Ive gotten the impression that Apollo-Team is focusing on other aspects of the core/FPGA at the moment.

There is a old thread regarding MMU on EAB with Toni weighting in;

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=44003

for what i see tonis comments in this thread exactly reflect gunnars and the apollo teams members view on the issue. i dont think anything has changed since then.

And again, if people want to run AOS on Vampire, noone is stopping them, now or in the future. But for longterm development of more advanced features, AROS might be the way forward.

at this point there is no talk about running aros on vampire as default. if im correct, what happens is that there are currently certain extensions to kickstart based on aros code, but still in order to have genuine workbench and whole os run on it, only with additiona features. as soon as aros kickstart be improved, it can wholly replace the genuine one, and then aros can perhaps replace 3.x or whatever system revision one would be running on vampire. this should be left to users and be proposed at a point when using aros has no negative implications for the user in terms of speed or compatibility. but if we want it to happen in the future the work on it must be undertaken immediately.

[wawrzon]

As I understand that is a P96 driver for Apollo developed by Jason McMullan. Why does it also exist another P96 driver by Thomas Richter dated 27/12/2015 ?

What happened? I am a bit confused. Two P96 drivers? Why?
Could anyone shed some light on this matter?

im not involved or have any internal knowledge, but it looks like that there is a p96 driver (developed by thor) that has been presented previously in high resolution videos about vampire functionality. this driver is subject to licensing issues and was only available for testing so far. the licensing parties could no be found or issues could not be solved to the advantage of parties, so as i have also proposed in another thread about an fpga-arcade rtg driver, apollo team has in the meantime got into an agreement with another developer to develop a free driver. since the developer in question is a core member of aros team, its pretty certain that the driver is based on aros cybergraphics framework which is free but should be compatible to genuine cgx and therefore to p96.

[wawrzon]

If the driver implements the P96 API, the problem remains - no license. If it only uses CGfx, I guess they'll have to deal with whether or not this is a legitimate option for CGfx. The latter I do not know. For P96, the situation is quite clear: No license, not legal.

aros includes cybergraphics which is open source reimplementation of cgx standard since ever. aros native drivers are based on this. do you argue that this is illegal? if so you must argue aros is illegal as a whole because it reimplements amiga functionality.

once again. i dont know details, but i doubt the driver jason wrote consists of p96 .card and .chip files. if its aros driver that just iterfaces to the system in form of another patch as cgx or p96 did, but independently of these, i dont see licensing issues.

[wawrzon]

That's however how I understand the situation. It is a P96 driver that can be used through the AROS CGfx emulation, which again has a P96 driver emulation. This is *not* legit. It should really go directly through AROS (or, depending on what the situation with the CGfx emulation is, through CGfx).

i see. you must be better informed in this respect, so if it is like you say i fully agree with this statement.

Neither CGfx nor P96 drivers interacted with the system through patches. Both have a native interface. The patches are done by P96 and/or CGfx core components.

my understanding is that rtg systems on amiga were implemented patching appropriate functions of graphics library. is that wrong?