Classic hardware and Upgrades VS Vampire

[Overflow]

So, this is a very subjective ...subject

I happened to find an A4000 Desktop for sale, and its really a machine I dreamt of owning back in my youth. Today I have A1200 (which will be Vampirized in 2017 I hope), and I already have V600.
The advantage I see from an A4000 is the expandability with the zorro slots (or mediator). I do NOT see myself expanding an A4000 with classic 060 or PPC, nor classic graphics cards. I might consider upgrading with a sound/music card;
Delfina or Prisma for example. Also Rapidroad USB would be intresting. Also IF a Vampire was developed for the A4000, it would be a great machine/box.

But then I start thinking about; Why bother with A4000 if I get a V1200? Harddrive access speeds is kinda crippling on the V600 at the moment, so that would be a nice change IF I got A4000.
Then the question becomes, since Im fully into the Vampire camp, and I WILL get a V1200 and Standalone Vampire, will there be much reason to get A4000 beyond the novelty of owning REAL classic hardware.
Will there be enough performance based arguments to justify it when you have the Vampire in the background?

I guess the BIG issue for me at the moment with regards to Amiga usage is; Harddisk speed and Internet download.

[crazyc]

A4000 is available now though....

Sent from my S7 Edge

[puppypc]

Heck, if you're interested in a project you could make a desktop 1200 while you wait for the Vampire to come out for it, add a mediator board or something similar. It looks like 3000/4000 Vampires are well in the future, if happening at all.

[Daedalus]

I don't think the hard drive speed is much better in an A4000 - if at all. I think the 600, 1200 and 4000 all use very similar logic for the IDE interface, with the only major difference being that it's buffered on a 4000. They're all limited to CPU-bound PIO transfers anyway. You could increase the speed with add-on hardware, but then you can do that with a 1200 too.

[UberFreak]

Originally Posted by Overflow

Harddrive access speeds is kinda crippling on the V600 at the moment

Are you using the Vampire SD card slot?
From what I saw & read, its faster than SCSI2 (which is much faster than A600 onboard IDE).

[Locutus]

Keep in mind that Vampire SD is just PIO

[Robbie]

I suppose essentially if you're putting a vampire in your Amiga it doesn't matter which model it is, it would completely negate the need to buy a 4000 over a 1200 as you wouldn't need to add anything via the zorro slots anyway. Which is a shame, because isn't that part of the fun?

[Overflow]

@Robbie

You make a fair point, but I see Shk use Zorro II products with his V500 videos;



So Zorro got its uses I guess. Then again Prisma supports clockport usage altho "only" a Music card at this point. Might be soundcard with proper driversupport if I read Tonis comments right?
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=...&postcount=391

Same goes for X-Surf, but from what Ive been told since I posted this thread, "only" a driver is what stands between ESP8266 (small Arduino module) and 802.11 b/g/n networks.

So Ive already landed on sticking to A1200, and looking at options for expanding it, either thru my spare PC tower I got sitting, or the new A1200 cases being produced.

[Locutus]

expanded A1200's hacked into PC cases become mechanical nightmares, forget any sense of reliability.

[Overflow]

How come? Does the motherboard/addons get affected by the Tower chassis that create interference/noise?

[Daedalus]

It's more about the expansions - the motherboard itself is fine, but mounting an accelerator, Mediator etc. on the expansion slot without the support it has in a desktop case is not particularly reliable. I have a towered A1200 for many years now and I'm happy with it, but it needed a lot of careful support building - strategically placed wooden blocks to hold things still and so on.

[trixster]

Buy an a4000 because you WANT one. Don't buy based on possible future expandability which might or might not happen, or umming and ahhing about this against that.

I was in a similar position to you earlier this year. I have a nice 060 A1200, an A500 and I'll buy a V1200 when it becomes available. But that did not stop me buying my first a4000 a few months ago. There was no reason to other than I simply wanted one. Same reasoning goes for why I've finally just bought a Falcon.

[grond]

Originally Posted by UberFreak

Are you using the Vampire SD card slot?
From what I saw & read, its faster than SCSI2 (which is much faster than A600 onboard IDE).

So far the Vampire SD hasn't received much love and thus isn't a real alternative to IDE. E.g. you can't boot from SD and the speed is still quite low (you may have seen high numbers for the IDE port of the v500+ which is indeed much faster than the A600 IDE). All this may change in the future but I agree with the notion that you should buy for what it is and not for what it may become.

[ShK]

A quick FLACK playback test with Prisma Megamix: