WWYD - A4000 or A500 Vampire

[Frederic_Freakazoid]

I probably already know the endgame for this, but curious what others would do...

Warning, ramble ahead...

So with the new Vampire boards out now/coming out I find myself more interested in reacquiring an Amiga 500 (or 1200) w/vampire, specifically, to run Quake on a network with other non-"PC" devices able to run it. I guess my main question is.. how "pure" is the Vampire considered? How much stuff is the A500 actually doing, once the Vampire is installed? Is the Vampire running Quake, or is the Amiga doing it? At the moment it feels like a cheat, especially considering stand-alone boards are being made.

I have, at the moment, an Amiga 4000D w/68040 Warp Engine that has been tinkered with on and off for the past 7 years, but still does not work. It was going to be my Quake-able Amiga to end all Amigas, but I've never secured the time or money to get it running, more or less get the additional parts (besides a probably-not-as-useful as-thought RTG card, and a 68040 to 68060 kit) to run Quake. I *think* all the A4000 needs is some TLC under a chip in the battery area (battery removed and area was cleaned when I first started tinkering) just to turn on without a grey/black screen flashing. It's been recapped, and even had an XC68040 swapped out for an MC68040 (but still using an old 40mhz crystal... no idea what the original owner, who had a video toaster installed, was doing with an underclocked system) on the warp engine. The potential is there for sure. I did once, purely by chance and before it was recapped, actually get the Amiga to display the insert floppy screen... Then I bumped it and I think it either GURU'd or started flashing the screen again.

Resurrect a dream machine, or make a lesser machine capable of way more than intended??...

Oh, and of course, in NTSC-land (how does the vampire fare outputting NTSC?).... I always liked traveling with my Amiga, and still would for retro gatherings.. ...but like any modern console, I'd like to use equipment available on site vs dragging along my own screen etc (Toshiba TIMM anyone?). Somehow I always think about the portability of the Amiga, but have found no universal solutions for it (no, not the GBS-8220, it failed my first tests).

Either way, I've no idea if we 'd ever get our Quake project going.. it's kind of just a proof-of-concept pipe dream.

 

[mjnurney]

Hi

Well to be honest the Vampire is doing all the heavy lifting, CPU and RTG & disk access. The amiga provides sound , keyboard, mouse all I/O generally as well as floppy access. These is no way an Amiga 68K could reach the speed the Vampire does , Motorola didn't make one. The only area a real silicon 68k will beat the Vampire is FPU and the next firmware update will destroy that too.

All in all it depends what you want ? a old school Amiga which is perfect and good or a modern accelerator l ..ike the vampire? its down to you...

I have V500 and V600 Vampires and while they both are fantastic, the 500 is the one to have in my opinion.

As NTSC vs PAL ...RTG doesn't care so i don't think thats a problem. RTG used VGA / HDMI resolutions , Amiga modes currently boot back to the Amiga OSC, ECS so an NTSC solution is required here.

Personally i use an upscaler to shift RGB in to HDMI and i have two HDMI (RTG & ESC / OCS ) at the moment and is works very well.

mike

 

[fitzsteve]

What's your reasons for preference over the 500 Vampire MJ?

@FF, the next Vampire will be stand alone and eventually chip ram and AGA will be implemented into the core with all video modes out of the HDMI. So it will only be Paula doing the Audio and peripheral functions.

Sorry to hear about your A4000 issues, the Warp Engine is a great card, it's not powerful enough for Quake though, well not too be playable anyway, it was like 6fps with RTG on my old machine.

I have the A500 Vampire too, it desperately needs the FPU support which as MJ says is coming soon, at the moment the lack thereof is holding it back for playing the games you mention.

 

[Rasta]

4000 for me. If I wanted an artificially blazingly fast A500, I'll open an emulator.

That's just my opinion. Not discounting the fact the Vampires are a great bit of tech, just not for me.

 

[Frederic_Freakazoid]

All in all it depends what you want ? a old school Amiga which is perfect and good or a modern accelerator l ..ike the vampire? its down to you...

Y'know, I just like being able to play games.. the Quake thing might be one-off and never tried or demonstrated anywhere ever again, if it even happens.... So I'm really leaning towards the Vampire, if nothing else as a 'for me' toy. In scaling down things at home the A4000 is my last Amiga. It would suck to let it go without really being able to use it (I did mess with it maybe 17 years ago), but having an A500 again that kicks ass, even if it's cheating a little as it's essentially using the Amiga motherboard as a souped-up keyrah, it's still using the motherboard at least... In fact that alone makes me think I should stick with V2 Vampire, so I can still use a plipbox or something to network.

 

[clusteruk]

Well I will video my Vampire soon, but I recently sold my A2000's 060, scsi and graphics cards to fund some AROS developments and will put my vampire in it soon which will free two Zorro slots and greatly increase the performance.

On the subject of not using Amiga for much except input, I have it running in a Checkmate 1500 (500 motherboard) and whilst it now has RTG through HDMI monitor which is way faster than old Cybervision in Zorro 2, and CPU much faster (yes FPU slower at present) I can still use Paula for sound through stereo outputs, Denise and Agnus for Amiga native display modes through the 23 pin on 1084s or an LCD display which flicker fixes it. There is no difference except for next part about the CPU changes.

68000 is only pure CPU, if you like that kind of backward thinking, because 020, 030, 040 and 060 caused problems throughout the history with badly written programs that did not follow the rules, so did AGA, but should not hold back progress, however, nearly all productivity software works fine that did follow the rules.

Motorola CPU line was dead, now Amiga fans are developing that CPU design forward with enhancements, why are we not all getting behind it?

Old Amiga's can be supercharged and yet all Amiga hardware functionality is still available. However, later will upgrade OCS/ECS machines by adding AGA modes and still allow old chip set to function.

Bottom line, and I may offend some people, but, most of those who are complaining either just play games, think the Amiga is some kind of antique to be put in a glass cabinet or were not around in the early days when we would have sold our left testicle for the vampire. (exaggerating on the sale item).

I am investing in a new case design to try and bring people back into the Amiga fold who left and hopefully they will see progress, and yes, it is Vampire and Emulator friendly.

Steve Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0aAQ-bLFXA

Edit

In answer to NTSC, it does seem to output NTSC fine as my Monitor rescales it to full screen but your mileage may vary. Oh and I note you are a game player, oops

 

[mjnurney]

Calling the Vampire a cheat or little more than a key rah is way off and some people call it emulation which again it isn’t. The vampire can be used as a CPU upgrade , no need to use RTG or fast IDE but what’s the point ? The vampire is as much or as little as you require but it will always be an accelerator.

You could argue that all RTG and all non 68000 are not pure Amiga but if that’s the case fire up those floppies.

i for one think the Vampire is probably the most important upgrade for the Amiga since the 030 and lord knows Amigas we’re known for being slow by the late 80s.

Remember Ocs and Ecs are all still active and available.

 

[fitzsteve]

Yo MJ, you didn't say why you prefer the 500 to 600 version, is it just the Amiga you prefer or is there something about the Vampire that's different (aside from connectivity of course)

 

[mjnurney]

Hi Steve, purely the connector and faster ide. The 600 one works well but the cpu connection is always a bit of a worry..

 

[fitzsteve]

Hi Steve, purely the connector and faster ide. The 600 one works well but the cpu connection is always a bit of a worry..

Yeah I remember that from the A600 Turbo Boards I used to have. I read about the faster IDE, do I need to use the Elbox drivers?

 

[mjnurney]

no drivers required , Amiga OS is the limiting factor now.

Vampire IDE is the fastest yet on the humble miggy.

 

[Frederic_Freakazoid]

An accelerator. Yes....silly me... That just solidifies my desire for one. I originally tried Quake on CD32 with a SX-32 Pro and 50mhz 030 accelerator. It was easily .01 FPS on the smallest screen. With expansions on CD32, it really killed the ability to play some other things without unplugging them, and akiko c2p GLOOM became a garbled mess. So an A500 accelerator that allows you to do such a thing... sign me up!

I am a game player, yes, but I also VERY poorly used my old Amiga 500, a VCR, and some non-Deluxe Paint program to create videos for high school where my social anxiety often caused intense fear of doing speeches. I also used a photoshop-like Amiga program for a while.

 

[mjnurney]

Well this is what Amibay is for , to help and form community in the retro scene.

The cd32 can just about manage doom with 8mb added but for an 020 that’s impressive , like all Amigas FPS needs 040 and above to shine , I had Quake running with an 060 but the vampire wil blow all that out of the water with its Ammx instruction set , larger cache and higher MHz.

We we are as a group here to help and yes I did that too , Dpaint introduction things on VHS but before that on the c64 too...

mike

 

[Frederic_Freakazoid]

I played, or at least tinkered with Doom quite a bit on my 030 CD32 and it wasn't too bad. Most every Amiga FPS ran *relatively* well on the 030 except Quake, AB3DII, and I believe Nemac IV(?). They all needed at least one of those 2x1 (or was it 1x2?) display modes to be smooth.

Before I was online I got nearly every Aminet CD for a while and would play with everything I could to see how it ran. Every new Quake revision/patch seemed to add .005 FPS and always kept my hopes up that there would be a speed breakthrough.

Do we know, is anyone devoted to making 68080 optimized games? Are there already new programming guidelines? Can we port Quake 3 to 68k Amigas now?

 

[fitzsteve]

There are a number of tech demos and such for Vampire so I wouldn't be surprised if we see some ports (maybe there are some attempts already?) Although for Q3 you would need 3D Graphics Driver, I don't recall it having a software rendering mode and even if it did I don't think Amiga's RTG would be able to push it?

 

[Hiddenevil]

I don't want to hijack a thread, but as we are discussing vampires. Any know when the A1200 model is coming out and for how much?

 

[mjnurney]

Hi,

after the V4 I believe , the blank pcb’s have been shown already.

i think v2.7 firmware is to be released with the v4 too.

 

[Hiddenevil]

Has a ball park figure been given for the price? Was just wondering how much it might set me back

 

[Frederic_Freakazoid]

I thought of another question: the A500 and the limited chip ram, how does that play with the Vampire? Will I have issues with WHDload games that need 2mb chip? If so does the Megi Chip thing work in conjunction with the vampire?

 

[fitzsteve]

I thought of another question: the A500 and the limited chip ram, how does that play with the Vampire? Will I have issues with WHDload games that need 2mb chip? If so does the Megi Chip thing work in conjunction with the vampire?

At the moment you will need at least 1mb Chip to enjoy most WHDload games. 2mb only applies to certain titles, I've played lots of games on my A500+/Vampire without issues and I only have 1mb Ram.

Future Core's will also take care of the Chip Ram issue, in fact you will be able to have up to 4mb Chip Ram from the Vampire and be able to enjoy AGA on a humble A500/A600