Vampire 600?

[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..

[biggun]

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..

The card plugs into the 68000 socket.
This means in theory it could be used in
A500
A1000
A2000
CDTV (not sure if the space for it is enough - need to verify this)

The card comes with
* Fast CPU
* 128 MB DDR3 - 1 GB/sec transfer speed
* MiniSDCard over IDE emulation as HD

* more features optionally ...

[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?

[matthey]

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.

Not all Ferraris are that crazy. My uncle has a low mileage Testarossa in California. Yea, no place to drive it or his quicker turbo Porsche 997 (still wasn't impressively quick or nimble, IMO). My RX-7 (high 12s in the 1/4 mile) is actually quicker than a stock Testarossa (mid 13s in 1/4 mile). The Testarossa may be a little faster with 180mph top speed because of more favorable gearing at the cost of gas mileage. The Testarossa looks fast and sounds cool though.

Putting a fast accelerator in an old Amiga might be more comparable to putting a BMW M3 engine in an old Volkswagen beetle (ready for the autobahn?).

[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

[matthey]

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

LOL. It's a stock motor, stock turbos, stock tranny 1993 twin turbo base model with bolt-ons (exhaust with cat though, intake, intercooler, pulleys, fuel injectors and pump, PFC computer) with about 14 PSI (1 atmosphere) of boost. It's about 350HP weighing ~2700lbs and did 12.9@110mph at the drag strip on street tires. A little 1.3 liter 2 rotor Wankel engine could never outperform a 4.9 liter V12 in a "Ferrari". Stock vs stock, the 3rd gen RX-7 would probably be quicker 0-60mph, the Testarossa would be a few tenths better in the 1/4 mile and the Testarossa is about 20mph better top speed. Then the RX-7 can be uncorked and the boost can be turned up while the Testarossa is already high compression.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testarossa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RX-7

[magnetic]

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

[biggun]

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?

As of today the plan is to release the card with the current Phoenix CPU core.
But the card is FPGA this means later versions with more bells, with FPU, etc SAGA .. could be loaded in the card.

The card comes with build in programmer to upgrade it.

[freqmax]

Is there enough logic to squeeze SATA inside?

And a box that looks like an Amiga and works like an Amiga but really just consist of a FPGA board should do? The only catch is hardware expansions but those might otoh be loaded into the FPGA in many cases.

Anyway, what causes the instabilities that is mentioned?

[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.

[matthey]

Is there enough logic to squeeze SATA inside?

SATA and PCIe require high speed transceivers which some fpgas have but they up the cost. The main focus of an accelerator for the 500/1000/2000/CDTV is to keep the price down. SD cards are small, low power and offer enough storage for (the new) low end Amigas.

Anyway, what causes the instabilities that is mentioned?

You mean the non-68000 CPU cores of majsta's accelerator? The TG68 was not originally designed to use a cache and the problems have to do with adapting one to it. It's obviously possible to get it working if investing time into this compatible core (the fpgaArcade has 68020+cache TG68 working reliably) but the Apollo Team (including Gunnar/BigGun) would rather work on the faster Phoenix core. The Phoenix core has bugs to work out because it's completely new. There is a good chance that the TG68 68020+caches or Phoenix core will be available this year.

[psxphill]

Putting a fast accelerator in an old Amiga might be more comparable to putting a BMW M3 engine in an old Volkswagen beetle (ready for the autobahn?).

It certainly makes more sense to put it in an A1200 or A4000 than it does in an A1000/A500/A600/CDTV.
 
I'd like to see how a hardware framebuffer c2p/15bit->ham8 conversion would pan out (equivalent of http://aminet.net/package/misc/emu/AmigaAGA-EVD12). Also texture mapping in hardware might be interesting, OpenGL rendering to AGA FTW.
 
But just a 500mhz 030 equivalent would sell a lot if it could be made cheap enough.

[biggun]

It certainly makes more sense to put it in an A1200 or A4000 than it does in an A1000/A500/A600/CDTV.

These models are planned too.

But frankly I think an A500 equipped with this card could at some point be 100% quivalent to an A4000.

[freqmax]

The Amiga 500 might need the extra speed more than any other Amiga model..

[psxphill]

But frankly I think an A500 equipped with this card could at some point be 100% quivalent to an A4000.

I'm interested in what you mean by that. If you replace paula agnus and denise then lots of things become possible, although at this point the mother board is just being used for it's connectors.