Apollo Team announces the Vampire V4

[Galahad/FLT]

If the price was reaaonable, id be wanting one for CDTV (assuming mine can be fixed at SWAG) and for my A1200.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Retrofan

If you want a standalone use WinUAE on your PC (or Raspberry Pi or similars) and you get exactly the same.

Ehm, no it is not exactly the same. Anyone who thinks that doesn't know how an FPGA works, but I think this discussion is getting old..

Anyway, they are in charge of the project so they can design it however they want. Anyone who doesn't like it and think it should be different or wanted something else, just move along. We are many who do like it just the way it is. Yes, it may not be 100% suited for my specific needs, but it doesn't have to be. I could demand that if I were paying all of the development and manufacturing costs. So as long as it fulfills enough of my requirements to make it worth the selling price, I'm in. If not, I'll just go back and have some more fun with my current Amiga stuff.

[Retrofan]

@demolition I thought we all old members could understand what I say without explaining it much. Yes, it's not the same of course, and it will be nice to have it, but I talk just about my feeling using as much of the original hardware as possible. When I don't have nothing visible but a new small plastic box with the Amiga name printed on it, I don't feel anything different from running WinUAE.

Of course I forget about all once I'm using it, but... you should know what I talk about.

And of course, as I say that's just my point of view. Everybody has his own.

Edit: And in fact this kind of discussion was here from the very beginning of the Vampire. People started complaining that this wasn't "real" hardware. I don't care about that, I like the Vampire, but I just prefer to have it inside my real miggy.

[Overflow]

Its being sold thru vendors, so it will be first come first serve.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Retrofan

@demolition I thought we all old members could understand what I say without explaining it much. Yes, it's not the same of course, and it will be nice to have it, but I talk just about my feeling using as much of the original hardware as possible. When I don't have nothing visible but a new small plastic box with the Amiga name printed on it, I don't feel anything different from running WinUAE.

Of course I forget about all once I'm using it, but... you should know what I talk about.

And of course, as I say that's just my point of view. Everybody has his own.

Edit: And in fact this kind of discussion was here from the very beginning of the Vampire. People started complaining that this wasn't "real" hardware. I don't care about that, I like the Vampire, but I just prefer to have it inside my real miggy.

I'm mostly with Retrofan here, if you're going to buy a standalone new computer to run an Amiga like clone on, it doesn't really interest me to spend $350 on what is about as fast as a CPU from 2001, with modern RAM.

Of course if I'm buying something like a CV64 for a classic Amiga then $100 is like such a good price as illogical as that is. For that matter if someone were to develop an accelerator for an A4000 that had an Intel I3 or AMD Ryzen 3 or whatever on it doing transparent 68k JIT emulation, I'd buy it in a heartbeat, as it would probably be ridiculously faster for about the same price.

But anyway we'll see how cheap/fast it is, fire up Dpaint and get that red bar longer. (This is a joke please don't take it the wrong way, I don't claim that anyone used Dpaint for this).

If the same board works either as an accelerator or standalone it doesn't make any sense to actually put it in an Amiga since you just took the versatility of having two computers and now it's only one.

Good idea to make it all the same board for the people that want to do that, for whatever reason.

[Neil79]

and featured! Would've been earlier, bloody back

[Retrofan]

Sorry but I think I didn't read carefully the original post and instead I read some -maybe wrong- posts.

Originally Posted by TuKo

...The Vampire V4 is made with a standard “one design to fit them all” and comes in three flavors depending on customer need:

The Vampire V4 Standalone System

The Vampire V4 for Amiga Classic compatible with
Amiga 1000/500/2000/CDTV
Amiga 600 with kippa’s adapter (if produced)

The Vampire V4 for Amiga 1200

As the board fits all of the options all together as it seems, then it's an absolutely perfect design for me, I don't have any complain but congratulations for the team.

I was saying what I prefer, but as I say, it's marvellous if it can get everybody happy

[UberFreak]

By the pace things have been progressing, looks like another year wait for A1200 owners.
Hopefully by the time the V1200 gets released, the core will be 100% compatible with the 68060 so I wouldnt have to keep two systems on my desk

[dalek]

wake me up when it's open sourced

[ptyerman]

Originally Posted by UberFreak

By the pace things have been progressing, looks like another year wait for A1200 owners.
Hopefully by the time the V1200 gets released, the core will be 100% compatible with the 68060 so I wouldnt have to keep two systems on my desk

I wouldn't pin your hopes on that. There is still no compatible 68040/060 FPU or MMU and no roadmap to include them.
It's just another disappointment.

[UberFreak]

Its not a big deal, I still have my 060 system to enjoy.
When the V1200 is released, I'll decide if its worth it for me.

@dalek: you mean the PCB design or Apollo core?
In any case I think you should prepare for a very very long sleep...

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by ptyerman

I wouldn't pin your hopes on that. There is still no compatible 68040/060 FPU or MMU and no roadmap to include them.
It's just another disappointment.

With 77k LE there is now room in this FPGA for the FPU, unfortunately I assume V2 owners are out of luck. MMU is unlikely to ever happen though.

[Overflow]

I got V2 for my A600, and I have no expectations of FPU beyond FEMU which Jari is working on.

As for V4, time will show what arrives. Just because XYZ feature, doesnt mean it will never arrive.

And thats why its good to see them offloading the customer relations to vendors, and production to a factory. Leaves the team to do design and development.

[Marchie]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

With 77k LE there is now room in this FPGA for the FPU, unfortunately I assume V2 owners are out of luck. MMU is unlikely to ever happen though.

Will be seriously disappointed if this is the case.

V4 looks great though...

[sean_sk]

Originally Posted by Retrofan

Yes, it's not the same of course, and it will be nice to have it, but I talk just about my feeling using as much of the original hardware as possible. When I don't have nothing visible but a new small plastic box with the Amiga name printed on it, I don't feel anything different from running WinUAE.

Of course I forget about all once I'm using it, but... you should know what I talk about.

And of course, as I say that's just my point of view. Everybody has his own.

Edit: And in fact this kind of discussion was here from the very beginning of the Vampire. People started complaining that this wasn't "real" hardware. I don't care about that, I like the Vampire, but I just prefer to have it inside my real miggy.

I'm of the same camp where I prefer to chuck a Vampire inside my Amiga because I enjoy the look and feel of the original Amiga. But I guess that's the beauty of this project, it appeals to both sides, those that want the original look and feel and those that aren't or don't want to be beholden to the old hardware.

It would be cool though if someone were to professionally design a case in the Amiga spirit for the standalone version and not some cheap and nasty 3D printed job ugghh.

I wonder if those IO headers on the standalone Vampire would be able to be used with adapters that go to real parallel, serial and external floppy ports. If so, then possibly it could be used in those new A1200 cases.
EDIT: Just realized there's no keyboard header, so probably out of the question and probably pointless as well.

Sounds pretty slick to me. I'm impressed with the progress the Apollo team has made.

Hey, if we can get one of these on an A4000 one day, and someone else comes up with a decent Sonnet Crescendo clone, we could really make ultimate classic Amiga machines, with the best of the best in processing power. I have no criticisms at all, which makes me unique in the Amiga world. I'm just excited!

[Marlon_]

Originally Posted by sean_skroht

EDIT: Just realized there's no keyboard header, so probably out of the question and probably pointless as well.

Keyrah -> USB on Vampire V4 Standalone.

Originally Posted by esc

I have no criticisms at all, which makes me unique in the Amiga world. I'm just excited!

Me too! Any progress and news are great. There's something for everyone!

[sean_sk]

Originally Posted by Marlon_

Keyrah -> USB on Vampire V4 Standalone.

Just looked that up and yeah that's pretty awesome. With a few more adapters like that then maybe it could work.

A little disappointed though that my A1200 has to wait longer for the V1200, considering the original Apollo Accelerators roadmap said it would be next. But no probs, I have the V600 to keep me entertained till then.

[Marlon_]

The Vampire V4 was most likely made to make the production easier. And a "one design fits all" approach will surely make us get the V1200 faster than if Majsta and Kippa would do V600 and V500 full time. :P

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Retrofan

Edit: And in fact this kind of discussion was here from the very beginning of the Vampire. People started complaining that this wasn't "real" hardware. I don't care about that, I like the Vampire, but I just prefer to have it inside my real miggy.

That I can understand. I want my Amigas to look and feel like real Amigas, no matter how modern everything is under the hood. That is also why I think I would prefer a V1200 over a standalone version, even if the A1200 motherboard at this time is more or less degraded to a port break-out board..