Vampire 600 V2 - Amiga 600 FPGA accelerator Pre-order

[BoKi]

There are number of reasons, first one is no more space on this board

I understand but doesn't bigger chips exist or is 64MB the "sweet spot" before prices drastically goes up? Just asking because I don't know what's possible and whats not but I do know I'd love to see (and pay extra for) 128MB or 256MB memory on this little beauty.

 

[majsta]

64MB is the maximum size I could find in one chip. For two of them we just don't have the space on this card 50mmX100mm. What's left of free I/O of FPGA are on the bottom side on the cards so only way to add more chips is bottom side of the card. That gives us lot of problems and probably need to go with 6 layers PCB. All of that increases the price. This is let's say entry level card, next year maybe we will build something more complex for A600, keep it compatible to this one but with more memory. Problem is not the cost of the memory itself(one memory chip of this type used on the board is 15Eur) problem is to make interfaces to it on such small board because each signal of each memory chip needs to be driven separately because our core works best that way.

 

[Crumb]

Having HDMI output is pretty cool as it can be used for audio too, not just gfx.

Even with ECS output I was daydreaming that the FPGA could hold RGBA/YUV to ham6 hardware&c2p decoding. Supplying source "chunky" RGBA bitmap and ham6 bitplane destination It could even write to the color registers directly without using copper. When doing c2p to entire bitmaps it could also prepare the optimal palette.

 

[myzar]

Declaring interest , i will send the money tomorrow

 

[myzar]

Declaring interest , i will send the money tomorrow

Payment sent

 

[trydowave]

So what's the deal with the extra features on the board? Any info on what they are and what they do?

Cheers
Tony

 

[eXeler0]

Trydowave, you only need to flip back one page in this thread, its all explained.

 

[A500DaBest]

Majsta I am waiting for the vampire 500 to send payment immediately to it.

 

[A500DaBest]

Done! I preordered vampire 600 as an investment and support and maybe might use it in the future.

 

[amizet]

Declare interest::interested: "PM sent" later.

 

[Keir]

Declaring interest, I will pay and PM later.

 

[amizet]

PMs sending.

 

[trydowave]

Please correct me if I am wrong but does the HDMI feature mean I won't have to buy an Indivision ECS?

Thanks

 

[Keir]

Payment sent (125 Euro).
I may have messed up and not sent as gift payment however. Let me know if so and we can re-do.

 

[hese]

Payment sent today for one card.

 

[BoKi]

Please correct me if I am wrong but does the HDMI feature mean I won't have to buy an Indivision ECS?

Thanks

I doubt that very much... the HDMI looks to be intended for future possible RTG Video (and/or even Audio) output but for the original video output you still need a scandoubler from what I understand.

 

[trydowave]

HDMI looks to be intended for future possible RTG Video (and/or even Audio) output.

Can you explain how this would work? I never had the RTG stuff back in the day. Does the vampire emulate (not sure thats the correct word) a graphics card and then it outputs to a modern TV? Dont amiga graphics cards have hi res modes?

Cheers

 

[eXeler0]

Trydowave, just a quick reminder: right now, the Vampire officially only offers a faster CPU and 64MB RAM, nothing else.. thats what we ordered here.
What will come later is at this moment in time only speculation.
That being said, a likely solution would be to build in something that is compatible with Picasso 96 or Cybergrafx "drivers". Only workbench & software written with RTG support would be able to use it as its display.
Old games wouldnt work with the new GFX card because they were not written with RTG support in mind.
However....
Knowing that the Apollo team have been dreaming big and planning to implement some kind of Super AGA or AGA ++ I wouldnt rule out entirely that they could manage to implement something thay is actually backward compatible with native Amiga modes.
But note that Im speculating wildly now.
When the time is right, we will get official info but dont hold your breath ;-)

 

[majsta]

Quick info: PCB is in the production since few days ago like I said that it will be. First parts needed are with me and today more parts for second batch and future projects ordered.

About HDMI, it is placed on the card because I had the space for it, for now nothing regarding that matter is promised so it is still on paper. Most important thing that HDMI will be present regarding hardware part, so in future cores there is a chance to support it.

Edit: Just to mention once more, none of this would be possible to finance by me alone if there were no pre-orders. So tnx all once more for understanding.

 

[A500DaBest]

* hugs majsta *