Vampire II for the Amiga 600 FAQ's

Does the A600 metal cover fit over the Vampire II?

[demolition]

Originally Posted by ondrej

Does the A600 metal cover fit over the Vampire II?

No.

Originally Posted by demolition

No.

Thanks for responding. How about the HDD bracket?


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[demolition]

Originally Posted by ondrej

Thanks for responding. How about the HDD bracket?

Also no. Here you can see how much it covers:


Actually, it covers most of the bracket area and can use two of the bracket holes to hold itself in place.

[sean_sk]

Hi there,

I'm struggling to find a definitive answer to this question and I'm hoping someone can help me:

I'm on the cards to get a Vampire 600 V2 with the GOLD 2 core and I'm not interested in using the HDMI output as my A600 will be connected to a CRT TV via an Amiga RGB to SCART cable. Will it still be business as usual as it was previously, using Workbench and playing native Amiga games either directly from Workbench, or through WHDLoad or from bootable game floppies? While I don't care too much about RTG or SAGA at this stage, will I have access to AGA for those games that will benefit from it?

Thanks guys for your time.

[demolition]

You can still use the 68080 with the RGB output just like any other accelerator, but it won't feel much faster than a 020 or 030 due to the slowness of the ECS chipset. AGA is still not implemented on the Vampire, but when it is you will only be able to use it through HDMI. If you never intend to use the HDMI output, I say you might as well stick with something like the Furia which will give you plenty of performance for WHDload, but is much cheaper.

[Locutus]

Native ECS should still work, no you dont get AGA modes.

[sean_sk]

Thank you for your answers guys, that has really cleared things up for me. I will still be getting it since I won't be totally ruling out the possibility of using HDMI later on. Those options will be there if I want to try them at a later stage, as a nice "upgrade path".

[KONEY]

Allow me to disagree here: I upgraded from a Viper '030 to a Vampire 2 but keeping my ol' 1084 and it feels hundred times faster now

Originally Posted by demolition

You can still use the 68080 with the RGB output just like any other accelerator, but it won't feel much faster than a 020 or 030 due to the slowness of the ECS chipset.

[thgill]

Yeah, I disagree too.

Vampire 2 even with the stock RGB output is mad crazy fast compared to any other accelerator you could possibly attach to the A600.

Window refresh rate and general snappiness around the OS is like greased lightning.

[sean_sk]

That's good to know because i have a lot of games/software that would benefit from the speed increase.

[Jope]

Games probably won't benefit as much, but productivity stuff like unpacking LHA archives and the sort will benefit a lot. :-)

[KONEY]

chip-set based games not at all but for example 3D parts of Wings from Cinemaware become quite impressive.

[Zetr0]

@Thread

RE: better than an 030 - Just some thoughts

How Fast is the V2 over an 030?
Firstly the V2 is incredibly fast - much faster than even the fastest 50Mhz 030 - the V2 is about 900% (9 times faster! ) - for example what would take 9 seconds of processing on an 030 will take about 1 second on the Vampire2 - or what would normally take an 030@50 1 minute and 30 seconds would only take 10 seconds on the V2.

Graphics OCS/ECS and Limitations
With this processing power this translates to OCS/ECS graphics being processed by the CPU and ready for the ECS chipset way before an 030 could even consider - polygon games massively improve here - early texture mapped games (e.g. Wing Commander) will be too fast to play and you will need to patch it.

Disk Access
Loading from disk with the V2 is nearly twice as fast than an 030@50Mhz (3.2MB versus 1.67MB) and this means you have a much faster desk top use which updates very quickly.

Memory
You also have 128MB of RAM to play with as well, an ACA630 with 64MB will probably cost you more than a Vampire V2.

Alternate Considerations
To be fair, if all you want is games, you might consider a cheaper ACA020 or Furia 020/030 option as 95% of games are limited in speed by the OCS/ECS chipset draw time and other than longer loading times you wont notice much (if any) difference when spanking Super Frog or Super Cars2.

However there exists that extra % of RTG Amiga games you can then explore at your leisure along side a whole host of MAC / PCTASK / SCUMM VM.

More Thoughts
I would recommend mjnurney's YouTube Channel he includes some Vampire2 and Furia demonstrations

[Overflow]

[ Show youtube player ]


Work in progress of game ported to classic AMIGA 500.
Features:
3 Player
Hundreds of Sprites
Hires screen resolution of 960x540
Full 24 bit colors with alpha effects on each sprite
Animated background



http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge...=4596&z=LOZvO0

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Overflow

[ Show youtube player ]
Work in progress of game ported to classic AMIGA 500.
Features:
3 Player
Hundreds of Sprites
Hires screen resolution of 960x540
Full 24 bit colors with alpha effects on each sprite

Looks nice, but it cannot be considered as ported to classic A500 since no classic A500 have the hardware specs for it. 68080 and SAGA is a new development which cannot be considered 'classic'. If that game could run on a 68060 with an old-school RTG like CV3D, then it could be argued that it could count as a classic platform, but I think this is Vampire only?

[Methanoid]

Originally Posted by TuKo

Currently running Vampire 2 here without any problem from day one with A604n+RTC+Wireless PCMCIA.

The original poster asked if the Vampire expands chip ram... no answer given.. Does anyone know? No point buying a 604N if it does so maybe I can save some money!?

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by Methanoid

The original poster asked if the Vampire expands chip ram... no answer given.. Does anyone know? No point buying a 604N if it does so maybe I can save some money!?

The answer is: not until Gold 3 when the AGA compatibility is added. Using the P96 support will decrease the need but audio and planar video will still use chip RAM until Gold 3 replaces the chipset altogether and maps Vampire SDRAM to chip RAM.

Sent from my Prism II using Tapatalk

[kolla]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

The answer is: not until Gold 3 when the AGA compatibility is added. Using the P96 support will decrease the need but audio and planar video will still use chip RAM until Gold 3 replaces the chipset altogether and maps Vampire SDRAM to chip RAM.

... using the MMU

[Methanoid]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

The answer is: not until Gold 3 when the AGA compatibility is added. Using the P96 support will decrease the need but audio and planar video will still use chip RAM until Gold 3 replaces the chipset altogether and maps Vampire SDRAM to chip RAM.

Sent from my Prism II using Tapatalk

But Gold3 is close now, no ?? Might save some money and skip buying a Ram expansion for the 600 when I get one