To Vampire or to Furia my a600? Help!

kcolbinyar

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Hey, would just love some thoughts on whether my wee a600 with my Furia 020/40 should be treated to a Vampire 600 v2? I am on the wait-list (time unknown) and have a nice machine chugging along doing its thing. If and when my Vampire turn materialises, do I treat myself?

I know this is very subjective, but I only have one physical Amiga and the obligatory FS-UAE, WinUAE, AF, Amikit, but am pining after my AGA 1200T somewhat and would love to use some old AGA titles on the real thing (i know, I should buy an A1200 too! :unsure:).

So I guess my real. question is: Does the Vampire, in your opinion, detract from the feel of having a real Amiga, or is it, being an FPGA 68k core, like a lovely modern Amiga that we all really deserve? (well, some of us, anyway:eek:).
 
I can only answer your question through my experience, that for a while my A500+ with the Vampire 500 was my only Amiga and whilst it's a fantastic setup I found myself wanting a true 680xx Amiga again and ended up getting another A1200/Blizzard 1230, in my opinion the perfect Amiga recipe.
 
I have a mist FPGA and its perfectly small running many cores, its not emulation nor is it real hardware and its the perfect speed coming in around 40mhz 030 performance with AGA ( and with a bit of luck soon rtg )

I used to have a vampire in my A600 and once I had ran doom , quake , tried a bit of mac emulation that was that,,, back to normal games which would work on a stock A600..

for me the ideal Amiga is 8mb ram+ and 020 28mhz so if you fancy a bit of frontier elite its a good experience.



i think part of the fun and heartache is getting the old hardware to play nice.

If it was me,, I would keep the A600 with either the Furia or a standard 8mb ram upgrade and go for the Vampire stand alone, best of both worlds.
 
Yep, that is a sweet A1200T you have on your channel. I did, way back in about '95, put my A1200 Blizzard 1230/50 (4mb) into a tower in a DIY project and that thing was just a perfect Amiga back then. I forget how many utilities from Aminet I was running to get it looking seriously pretty with it's 'Intel Outside' logo on the backdrop. I saw a 1230 on ebay a while back and should have bought it and then built the 1200 around it - d'oh!

Thanks for your thoughts. Obviously it's made me even less certain where I'm going with it, but that's part of the fun - unlike my monster Win10 PC that is frankly lovely and very boring (how is that?).

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I have a mist FPGA and its perfectly small running many cores, its not emulation nor is it real hardware and its the perfect speed coming in around 40mhz 030 performance with AGA ( and with a bit of luck soon rtg )

I used to have a vampire in my A600 and once I had ran doom , quake , tried a bit of mac emulation that was that,,, back to normal games which would work on a stock A600..

for me the ideal Amiga is 8mb ram+ and 020 28mhz so if you fancy a bit of frontier elite its a good experience.



i think part of the fun and heartache is getting the old hardware to play nice.

If it was me,, I would keep the A600 with either the Furia or a standard 8mb ram upgrade and go for the Vampire stand alone, best of both worlds.

That is sound advice really. I've a Vampire on order too and am in the (probably achingly long) queue, but would be worth the wait. In your experience was the Vampire just not feeling like an original Amiga? I've heard others say they played with it for a while, did some 3d games, tested it, mucked about and then took it out again in favour of a CISC chip/traditional accelerator. So are you saying that, with the Furia, there is only the Furia and CoffinOS(?) experience and, whilst good, is still not a classic Amiga feel that you get with the clunky old hardware rattling around inside your wedge?
 
Sorry if I made things more complicated lol. I like Sardines suggestion of the Vampire standalone, could be a perfect compromise.

I've got my name down for a Vampire 1200 at some point. I'm not certain where to take my projects at the moment, I do have a tenancy to go overboard lol. Thanks for the kind words, the Tower is in a great place, only a few little bits of tidying up such as some cablework.

Good luck with your project whatever you decide I'm sure you'll have fun putting it all together
 
Vampire's are great but nothing beats the original hardware :)

i have my trusty A1200 with an ACA1221-lc RAM card in the trapdoor for all my WHDLoad gaming needs, plus a Vampire V4 Standalone for messing around with.

You know it's going to be a good night playing Pinball Fantasies or Slam Tilt with pizza and beer to hand (y)
 
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I am very happy with my A600 with ACA620, 604n and RTC.
A little weak maybe...68EC020@16.66MHz IIRC.
My Vampire MK1 looks like it´s dead....believe i had some issues with that when it worked, but it could be that i used my other motherboard which needs a recap.
Blazing speeds anyways!

The 600 is my only working Amiga at the moment but it´s stable so i´m happy.

Think i will add the indy ECS to it and just let it sit in the office for anyone to have fun with it....1084S whining driving me nuuuts!

Looks like i´m going for a1200 tower with Blizzard 1230 IV@50MHz for new main system.
 
I am very happy with my A600 with ACA620, 604n and RTC.
A little weak maybe...68EC020@16.66MHz IIRC.
My Vampire MK1 looks like it´s dead....believe i had some issues with that when it worked, but it could be that i used my other motherboard which needs a recap.
Blazing speeds anyways!

The 600 is my only working Amiga at the moment but it´s stable so i´m happy.

Think i will add the indy ECS to it and just let it sit in the office for anyone to have fun with it....1084S whining driving me nuuuts!

Looks like i´m going for a1200 tower with Blizzard 1230 IV@50MHz for new main system.

Oh yeah, a Blizzard 1230 IV@50mhz. I had one in my DIYd tower in 1996 - that was so sweet. Do you already have the card?

My a600 is sweet, but kinda wanna see a working 1200 again with a decent accelerator, but they are tough to come by now, it seems. Did you find the Vampire was just a different experience to using a classic Amiga, or did it still feel like the real thing with bells and whistles?

Yes, the Indy ECS on a 4x3 monitor is nice and I prefer it to my 1084s, as I'm not keen on the feel of crt on my eyes, so may sell that. It looks nice to me on my LCD.
 
Will hopefully be on it´s way this weekend :)
It´s just too long ago for me to be sure, but i do believe having the A600 with Vampire felt like....an A600, just waaay faster :)
Can´t remember the issues i had, but most likely related to running software/games that could not operate at those speeds...meaning boot with the vampire deactivation key commands ( can´t really remember if this is correct either ) :D


I am currently looking around for a newer CRT to use with indy on the 1200...unless it messes with my eyes...then I´ll start looking for 4:3 LCD´s. ( was quite happy with indy and LCD a while back )
Just 4-5 years ago you could get them for free, just because no one wanted to use warehouse space for them anymore....now i´m lucky to even find 1 used and damaged 10-20 years old CRT for sale here....and 4:3 LCD monitors with white bezels might be even worse :O
 
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