Vampire 500+ Pre-orders now being accepted

[DamienD]

Things have been relatively good over the past week or so. No need to start something from dubious comments...

Originally Posted by emufan

yeah, sorry. already thinking about what i can do in my 2 week vacaion

Well, it may be possible... everything is in your hands

Back on topic please.

[Mr.Flibble]

Originally Posted by emufan

here on eab.

Well, he's only just posted that message on his site, and I can't imagine that people are reloading his site constantly for updates?

Now the word is out, I expect that expressions of support will come through on this forum.

[Machico2012]

A question remains for those who want to buy A600 vampire model, from who and when... if someone has some info on this please comment, thanks!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[E-Penguin]

I guess you'd be looking on the used market, unless someone else takes over production.

It is a real shame if a run of bad boards has put him out of pocket. He deserves to be rolling in it after all that effort.

[emufan]

yep, he deserves better - i hardly understand, why there is no way ro return the bad boards :/

[Machico2012]

I guess future buyers could help by paying some extra money per board in order to compensate his losses...

[emufan]

Originally Posted by Machico2012

I guess future buyers could help by paying some extra money per board in order to compensate his losses...

and he can sell some boards on ebay - as done by majsta.
it simply cant be the end of the story.

[Overflow]

I got my V600 after the first price increase, and Kipper actually apologized for the increase. I would have paid the price even if it had been over double of what he asked from me.

So, if Vampire put him a hole financially, maybe he should consider a donation icon on his site, so those that feel so inclined can send some money his way.

Someone that has worked so hard for the community should not leave drained emotionally or financially imho.

Either way; thanks for your hard work Brian!

[kipper2k]

Originally Posted by emufan

yep, he deserves better - i hardly understand, why there is no way ro return the bad boards :/

Hi,

i don't want to dwell on this subject, basically boards had a 25% failure rate based on a 200 piece order so do the math and see the effects. The board house has suddenly lost interest in speaking to me and left me on my own. I won't increase prices to offset any losses and wouldn't sell on ebay as i do not like their policies and fees. i am part swapping to repair as many as i can. Diagnostic tools are not good for fault finding so it is a slow and painful process trying to resurrect them and tbh i have lost the motivation to keep spending hours removing/replacing parts.

C'est la vie

[emufan]

*argh*

hmm, maybe sell some boards on Amibay - set original price + what ppl want to add on their own.
you dont have to be shy, sort of, at least ppl on the amiga community boards - Amibay,
will understand and would for sure add some extra bonus.

C'est la vie

yeah, it suxx :/

[sean_sk]

Dont blame you kipper. Sorry to see you stop but glad that you will before it ruins you. When it stops being fun its time to call it quits. I have one and wanted to say a huge thanks!

Possibly a dumb question: but if Amigakit are going to sell the Vampire 500+ couldnt they take over the manufacture amd sale of the Vampire 600 V2 and perhaps find a more reliable board manufacturer? I guess it would depend on demand and production costs but it would be sad to see this project disappear completely. (Kinda makes me mad the board house treated you in that manner Kipper.)

[Starglider 2]

Originally Posted by kipper2k

Hi,

i don't want to dwell on this subject, basically boards had a 25% failure rate based on a 200 piece order so do the math and see the effects. The board house has suddenly lost interest in speaking to me and left me on my own. I won't increase prices to offset any losses and wouldn't sell on ebay as i do not like their policies and fees. i am part swapping to repair as many as i can. Diagnostic tools are not good for fault finding so it is a slow and painful process trying to resurrect them and tbh i have lost the motivation to keep spending hours removing/replacing parts.

C'est la vie

Put a donate icon on your website. Don't be defeated. You might be surprised. 😉

[Machico2012]

Kipper, don't give up the dream! theres lot's of amiga fans willing to give you a hand!

[Reido]

Kipper2k you legend! Thank you for all your hard work!

[spacey]

yeah, as others have said, all your hard work has been much appreciated, kipper2k.

[majsta]

Hi, it is frustrating like kippa say to find where problem is on each card.
Generally speaking I was never happy with assembly done in certain board houses in China. That's why I moved complete production to my country and now I m happy with the results. Worst thing is that assembly cost is the same but difference is that you can pickup the phone and actually talk to the people in factory what to do and how to do it. I think that main problem here was soldering paste used in his PCBA company. In reality when you have so high failure ratio loses are huge regarding money and time. Then you start to wonder does other cards work at all if so much of them failed from same batch. All of this is very risky and it is hard to play safe.

I ll try to explain something. Kippa was the only one able to solder card, either by hand or to run production. In past few years people asked me number of times to give them blank PCB. They were proving their skills by showing me lot of projects they done before. We inside team agreed that we should never send blank PCB but well I did it and send some of them. People who claimed that they have equipment, access to most modern tools. They claimed that they can make my life easier. They said to me that they can run large batches and such stuff. After I send them PCB no one replied, no one assembled any single card and I m sure that no one will. Then in front of that they claimed that they could do cards cheaper and after seeing BOM list they stopped talking. So yes, kippa was the only one who did actually solder card that could work.

Right now, I m puzzled what to do and we will discuss that inside team soon. There is big question can I takeover V600 production. Problem is that if I take it it will be too much for me. Right now I m doing my best to handle V500 and I can hardly keep up. On the one side I start to feel like slave and I think that at some point kippa had same feeling. From complete perspective things needs to change and become even more organized. It is not enough just to build cards and send them to some shop. You need to test each one and that takes lot of time. Then again if you let someone else build them and sell them again testing is needed. At the end all comes back to team members, me or someone else who is able to do proper testings. From my side it is frustrating that I m thinking about cardboard boxes, envelopes, printing manuals, packing everything and sending. Same time doing loads of paperwork's for orders, our database, suppliers, assembly, customs. Frustrating is that just today I found design we have done in 2015. with DDR memory, build PCB and got all parts but I have never had the time to solder components and start coding. Right now I m not doing anything but packing cards, there is no single task that I m doing inside core. I didn't even had the time to test latest cores or to rest by playing some amiga game. So yes, I know how kippa feels and we really need to find new strategy to move on. In last few month I have build 4 batches of cards. First I have done 100 on my pick and place machine, then 50 additional in factory and said yes this will be enough, then I had to build 150 and now in last batch 200. It is never enough and seems to me that it never will be. I wanted to build some cards and to finally start doing what I was doing before, coding something for the cards. Now, this is long shot and might never happen. Well, all will be good and I think positive, we all just need to have some patience and understand complete story.

[demolition]

Thanks for the insight Majsta. I for sure would not blame your or the rest of the team if you declared that you would not make any more boards at all until the next version is ready (V1200?). There are quite a number of Vampires on the market already and for sure someone would be disappointed to not have one, and that's your fault for creating too nice a product.

Of course it would be optimal if production could continue somehow, but it should not be at the expense of anyones sanity.. You need to be able to have time to do stuff you enjoy as well.

Also a big thanks to Kipper for doing so much work on this.

[emufan]

Originally Posted by majsta

... and we will discuss that inside team soon.

somehow I was waiting for this already.

so there are essentially 2 people only creating the hardware, while there are 9 people listed as test team for the Apollo core?
cgugl, flype, freemilk, grond, guibrush, mfilos, Ng, ShK and TuKo (test team).

hmm, isnt there a way to send one or two of the test team, the boards for testing and they may send away the finished cards to customers?

and to repeat what Starglider2 said: add a donation button to your websites, kipper2k & majsta.
maybe this way you get some additional support and extra motivation to keep up with your work.

thanks for all you are doing and have done already - both of you - much appreciated

[Amiga1992]

as I said before the worst part of this is that Vampire took over kipper's time and now he needs time off from absolutely everything Amiga related, and many cool projects have gone away with this. I hope you find the motivation to go back to those in the near future, though.

I recently helped a friend out who had made an NES cartridge game, and I can understand what the whole deal must be for kipepr and majsta. Just putting stuff in boxes and mailing it is a HUGE mindfuck if you are alone.you have to assemble and test every board, you have to deal with emails from customers, problems of users...

I hope you get to find the help you need to safely and sanely go on, majsta.
Suggestion, maybe: talk to Gideon who makes 1541 Ultimate. I think by now his project pretty much runs on wheels but it took him years to get to that point. Last time I remember him traveling to China to check out the production facilities. His product success rate also got reaaaally boosted when he developed testing hardware. He might be able to offer you some insight as a fellow FPGA hardware producer in Europe.

[majsta]

@emufan tnx for tips, however money is not problem here and for me personally will give zero motivation coz this is not and won't be something I do for living. I m still highly motivated coz nice comment from someone who receive card and test it moves me. I only wish to help team more in other subjects and now I don't have the time and that's it. For production I can say that on my side lately run constantly and I already making plans for next assembly. Right now I have about 65 000 parts waiting to be put on PCBs. So no worries on that side.