Vampire600 GOLD2.8 Woes

[arongooch]

Hi all,

Lazy Sunday afternoon today so thought I would setup the Vampired 600 and flash GOLD2.8. After a lot of reading forums and not getting any clear and precise information on this capacitor mod, I decided to temporarily tack in some extra 10uF electrolytics across C3 & C6, going on Gunnar von Boehn's advise.

I performed the flash in WB with the V600V2_X11.exe (Can definitely confirm it was the correct .exe flash I downloaded for the A600 Vampire). I downloaded and all went well ending with a message saying something like the reflash had successfully completed. Upon rebooting the machine it now only boots in standard 68000 mode with no signs of the Vampire working at all. The system boots normally from my installed CF card but the Vampire functions have completely ceased.

In desperation I decided to swap the additional 10uF caps with 22uF capacitors temporarily tacked in over the 0805 SMD caps and I have checked and rechecked everything is correct polarity, no issues here.

What could I be missing?

[Acill]

Hi all,

Lazy Sunday afternoon today so thought I would setup the Vampired 600 and flash GOLD2.8. After a lot of reading forums and not getting any clear and precise information on this capacitor mod, I decided to temporarily tack in some extra 10uF electrolytics across C3 & C6, going on Gunnar von Boehn's advise.

I performed the flash in WB with the V600V2_X11.exe (Can definitely confirm it was the correct .exe flash I downloaded for the A600 Vampire). I downloaded and all went well ending with a message saying something like the reflash had successfully completed. Upon rebooting the machine it now only boots in standard 68000 mode with no signs of the Vampire working at all. The system boots normally from my installed CF card but the Vampire functions have completely ceased.

In desperation I decided to swap the additional 10uF caps with 22uF capacitors temporarily tacked in over the 0805 SMD caps and I have checked and rechecked everything is correct polarity, no issues here.

What could I be missing?

I'd get a USB Blaster and try to flash it through a PC now back to 2.5 or 2.7 if you had it working.

[arongooch]

Cheers for that. Pretty much what I was thinking would have to happen and was kind of afraid of.

A bit disappointed for obvious reasons that it has come to this but seems to be expected and the risk taken by people ive been reading about in the forums. I guess it's just the Amiga as a hobby at the end of the day.

What I really don't understand is how the flash.exe reported that the FPGA was flashed successfully in WB. I mean it's either flashed or it's not. It was a perfectly stable flash with no issues until I restarted the machine. I am starting to wonder if there could still be a hardware issue here?

[Zooz]

Did you "rebooted" or "powered off/on" ?

If so, i would try then the _x10 version to check how it behaves.

[PPC]

Cheers for that. Pretty much what I was thinking would have to happen and was kind of afraid of.

A bit disappointed for obvious reasons that it has come to this but seems to be expected and the risk taken by people ive been reading about in the forums. I guess it's just the Amiga as a hobby at the end of the day.

What I really don't understand is how the flash.exe reported that the FPGA was flashed successfully in WB. I mean it's either flashed or it's not. It was a perfectly stable flash with no issues until I restarted the machine. I am starting to wonder if there could still be a hardware issue here?

Yes could be hardware issue that the vampire hasn't got enough power to run that core.
It also could be that the socket of the V600 isn't making enough contact anymore, then you get this same behavior.
You know it's the socket when you try to flash it trough the USB blaster and it won't flash the .jic file and you get an error instead if 100% successful, it took me some hours of fiddling to get it running again.
So I'll be replacing my socket soon.

[arongooch]

Hi all, thanks for the suggestions.

Got a USB Blaster and downloaded Altera Quartus 13.1 programmer and re-flashed the FPGA. All is working absolutely perfect now and can confirm it was definitely an issue with the flashing process done from AmigaShell and the latest updated flash.exe

I am definitely puzzled the Amiga booted after the apparent failed update however. Some say it was a connection issue but I really don't think it was because I didn't remove the card to work on it, it's always been well secured and never have suffered connection issues with my particular Vampire card before. Also immediately after the reflash today via the USB Blaster, it sprang back into working order.

Very happy the A600 with Vampire is back in full working order and the latest update looks awesome!

[David Wright]

I am starting to suspect that the core updates are just plain unstable for some, not just A600 owners.
My A500 now shows 2mb chipram where only 1mb exists. Some games crash for no reason, possibly the ones that need 1mb for some reason. i took out trap door ram and it shows correctly 512k.

But here is the kicker. I now have installed it in my A1000 and it still shows 2mb chipram. There is no trap door ram to confuse it. Something with the card or firmware. I have tried booting with different os and the same. Also every game crashes and some rtg programs. By crashes , I mean rebooting.

[arongooch]

That's unusual for sure there David. Not sure what would be up with that? Looks like the Apollo team still have a bit of work to do with future core updates.

The upgrade re-flash process definitely seems a pain but from now on I'll definitely be going the USB Blaster route I think. Hopefully by Gold3 most of these bugs and issues will be sorted out though. As everything with Amiga these days, it's all a hobby and to me the journey is most of the fun of it