New A500+ Vampire V2+ Project

fitzsteve

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Hi All,

Whilst waiting for the data to copy across to my SSD in WinUAE I thought I'd share a few pics of my new Amiga project, it's been such a long time but after seeing the Vampire in action at Amiga32 I knew I had to have one!

As soon as they became available at Amigakit I snapped one up and after a bit of searching I managed to find an A500+ that has been sat in a loft un-used for almost 30 years! The perfect host for my Vampire 500 project.

It seems I've forgotten quite a few of the basics but after a bit of trial and error my SSD is receiving data! Maybe I should have watched one of my guides lol?

Here are the pics as promised, as you'll see I was extremely lucky with the battery!


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Curious...What size ssd are you using....and what SSD to ide adaptor?

Hi ya, the SSD is 16gb by Kingspec. It's PATA (IDE) so no converter needed. I used to use it with my AmigaOne Micro and kept it as a backup, instead I've now Imaged the drive to retain a backup of my AmigaOne setup and prepped it via WinUAE for the 500/Vampire. I've gone with OS3.9 (Classic Workbench) which reminds me I might need to skip the BB2 scsi update for compatibility!

Here's a pic of the drive hooked up via USB:

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Hey guys, made some progress at last, my new IDE cable turned up. Wasn't able to get OS3.9 to boot but made a nice Classic Workbench P96 setup that's (mostly) working. Needs FPU support for some operations such as displaying images, I hear that's coming in Gold 2.7 so I wont bother messing with the Datatypes.

Very quick running, shows 95MIPS in SysSpeed :D

I didn't have any MPEG-1's to show off the Video playback but MP3's are of a course no problem. Compatibility with old games seems decent at least from the ones I tried, no issues yet.

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In case you are looking for sth more complete, ApolloOS is kind of a standard OS for Vampire because it comes preconfigured with lots of bells and whistles ;)
 
In case you are looking for sth more complete, ApolloOS is kind of a standard OS for Vampire because it comes preconfigured with lots of bells and whistles ;)

Hi Yeah I saw that but I prefer Classic Workbench :) I will probably do a dual boot at some stage or a CF with ApolloOS later for testing.
 
The Vampire in the 500 is very exciting! Thanks for sharing Steve!

Plus, we got new keycaps coming soonish and an A500 replacement case is to be Kickstarted soon.....its still a great time to be an Amiga fan!
 
I think need minimum 32gb cf card maybe sandisk (slight different memories on different brands by few bytes) for apollo os if want all software included, operating system is only 1gb on apollo os but games and other software is about 16-18 gb.

I will be building a new sdnet once get my ethernet arduino part from china. sdnet pcb http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=5&note=11149

for best video playback use http://aminet.net/package/gfx/show/RiVA-0.52 maybe newer version on the apollo forums.
 
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You did well with this Steve - great setup mate! What are you using to image your drive from the HDF file?
 
Hey guys, made some progress at last, my new IDE cable turned up. Wasn't able to get OS3.9 to boot but made a nice Classic Workbench P96 setup that's (mostly) working. Needs FPU support for some operations such as displaying images, I hear that's coming in Gold 2.7 so I wont bother messing with the Datatypes.

You can still use Femu to gain FPU support with Gold 2.5. While it is a lot slower than with Gold 2.7, it should at least make it possible to most FPU-reliant software. Also, unless we're talking 3D stuff, much software that requires the FPU doesn't actually use many FPU-instructions in reality so the speed will still be high despite having a slow FPU.
 
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You did well with this Steve - great setup mate! What are you using to image your drive from the HDF file?
Hi ya mate, thanks for the kind words. I'm just using Winuae to set it up as I always have. I wanted to keep it as Amiga as possible lol.
Hey guys, made some progress at last, my new IDE cable turned up. Wasn't able to get OS3.9 to boot but made a nice Classic Workbench P96 setup that's (mostly) working. Needs FPU support for some operations such as displaying images, I hear that's coming in Gold 2.7 so I wont bother messing with the Datatypes.

You can still use Femu to gain FPU support with Gold 2.5. While it is a lot slower than with Gold 2.7, it should at least make it possible to most FPU-reliant software.
Thanks, I didn't know about this. I'll look at that. I'm not finding a huge amount of info online, but I'm probably looking in the wrong places...

- - - Updated - - -

The Vampire in the 500 is very exciting! Thanks for sharing Steve!

Plus, we got new keycaps coming soonish and an A500 replacement case is to be Kickstarted soon.....its still a great time to be an Amiga fan!

Cheers, always glad to share my projects, it's been far too long lol

I think need minimum 32gb cf card maybe sandisk (slight different memories on different brands by few bytes) for apollo os if want all software included, operating system is only 1gb on apollo os but games and other software is about 16-18 gb.

I will be building a new sdnet once get my ethernet arduino part from china. sdnet pcb http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=5&note=11149

for best video playback use http://aminet.net/package/gfx/show/RiVA-0.52 maybe newer version on the apollo forums.

Hi ya, I tested riva with a movie I converted to mpeg 1 but the sound was out of sync. I'll try lowering the bit rate on the audio.
 
You can still use Femu to gain FPU support with Gold 2.5. While it is a lot slower than with Gold 2.7, it should at least make it possible to most FPU-reliant software.
Thanks, I didn't know about this. I'll look at that. I'm not finding a huge amount of info online, but I'm probably looking in the wrong places...
I am running Gold 2.5 with the latest ApolloOS and while Femu is included in that distro, it is disabled as standard. After enabling it, I was able to run several 060 demos that needed FPU. I also did find some software that would crash when Femu was running (but ran fine without it, perhaps due to some incompatible FPU-detection), so it is nice to be able to easily switch it on and off.
 
Thanks again for the info Demolition :)

I finally got my SD Card working, it was a lot more straight forward than the confusing info on the Apollo Accelerators Website/Wiki for Fat95 you just need to create an SD0 file in Devs:Dosdrivers!

So here she is all setup a ready for gaming:

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Updated my Vampire to Gold 2.7, loving the FPU support!

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And a few Video's (very short from the phone sorry!)

[m]https://youtube.com/watch?v=TvbSWoIdyzo[/m]

[m]https://youtube.com/watch?v=nOq21GhKEUE[/m]

[m]https://youtube.com/watch?v=-2fkTZMwML0[/m]
 
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mm yum yum I want one for my 500 Steve have you tried frontier elite ? I would be in heaven.

Any one else had experience with frontier my fav game for miggy.

Jamie.
 
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mm yum yum I want one for my 500 Steve have you tried frontier elite ? I would be in heaven.

Any one else had experience with frontier my fav game for miggy.

Agreed, Frontier is still one of my all time favourite games!

With the Vampire you can run it on high-detail and it is super smooth with a glorious frame rate.

The Galactic Map scrolls easily around. After launching you can watch the space ports slowly receeding into the distance, and in battle you can track the enemies as they fly around your ship without any guessing as to where they will go next.

You'll be Dangerous in no time :)
 
Sounds Awesome, I will have to fire Frontier Up tonight.

If any of you Frontier Fans play Elite Dangerous add me CMDR 'fitzsteve' :)
 
Steve pull your finger out :LOL:

Still waiting on frontier demo on the vamp.

Jamie.

Sorry lol, I didn't get round to any retro stuff this weekend, I was meant to resolder the pins on my Mouse adapter too!

I was actually playing Elite Dangerous, exploring the bubble nebula lol.

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