Vampire or PiStorm?

[videofx]

I want to put either a Vampire or PiStorm in my A1000

Is there anything the Vampire can do that the PiStorm cant?

Why one over the other?

Thanks!

[trixster]

At the moment Vampire is massively faster. I think vampire gives you AGA whereas pistorm will not.

[videofx]

Thanks Trixster!

Anyone else know more about the Vampire vs PiStorm?

[Promilus]

@videofx - those are different approach for a turbo card. Vampire is based on FPGA (Cyclone III for Vampire 500 V2 version) which handles everything to exactly fit into amiga memory map and CPU softcore acts as enhanced 040/060 alike. So in other words directly after boot you do have everything you could have with Amiga + Turbo + RTG + ...
Use of softcore inside the same FPGA which is (nearly) directly hooked to Amiga also allows fastest possible CPU to CHIP RAM transfers (and FAST2CHIP as well). On the other hand PiStorm is based around emulation of 68k CPU on Broadcom ARM CPU and physical interface is based on FPGA. Since FPGA is hooked to Broadcom with GPIO and not dedicated data/address bus it means there has to be yet another layer of translation. And emulated 68k itself (along with RTG, mass storage) are just application run on RaspiOS so it won't work until OS loads up and obviously will fail if app/os hangs up. PiStorm atm is also much slower (both because it's hardly optimized software emulation and because it's interface to amiga isn't quite as good as softcore<->amiga inside of Vampire).
In other words - PiStorm is budget option for something being cross of emulator and accelerator. Not every amiga fan likes that. Vampire is premium option with decent support and kind of close to metal approach like all the hardware hacks inside most turbo cards. Premium performance means also premium price and pretty long time to delivery.
So if you need turbo ASAP - go with PiStorm, that's pretty safe option with plenty of room to improvement. You hardly can get much more from fixed FPGA on Vampire than it already has. There's distinct possibility PiStorm emulation software will improve it's performance and/or allow use of unused ARM cores to offload certain tasks plus use more on-board peripherals efficiently under AOS (e.g. video core, usb3.0).

[videofx]

Thanks Promilus!

Thats what I needed to know!

[sean_sk]

Originally Posted by trixster

I think vampire gives you AGA

No, unfortunately it doesn't.
Yes, there is that alpha test core that they released a few years back that included AGA in the core, but they had to cut out a lot of features to fit it into the FPGA and, in my opinion, does not run reliably enough to be useful.
So don't expect AGA on the V500.

If you want something for your Amiga 1000, rather than getting a Vampire 500 V2, I'd wait for the release of the Apollo Team's Firebird V4 (due out towards the end of this year) that will have the same Cyclone 5 FPGA as the Vampire V4 standalone and will therefore eventually be able to have the option for AGA.

[nikosidis]

PiStorm has a loooong way to go. Maybe it will never be as the real thing.
WinUAE is hell of a lot better than a PiStorm in Amiga.
PiStorm is also difficult to set up.
I would say PiStorm can be good if you are not into Games and demos.

Vampire is nice but if you are going to use your Amiga only for Games, demos, as most do, it is overkill.

Keep the A1000 original. Then you can find some used A600 and get a Furia. Will cost nothing more than a Vampire and you will be 100% original. Even if Vampire has god compatibility it is not like the real thing.

[grond]

In all fairness, PiStorm is a pretty new (and quickly evolving) project and there still is a lot of unused potential.

As for the Vampire being overkill: it is as much overkill as any 060 or 060+PPC accelerator card is.

[nikosidis]

Originally Posted by grond

In all fairness, PiStorm is a pretty new (and quickly evolving) project and there still is a lot of unused potential.

As for the Vampire being overkill: it is as much overkill as any 060 or 060+PPC accelerator card is.

With a 060 or Vampire and some AGA machine you have a lot of nice scene stuff to watch.
For all OCS machines I would say that a Vampire or 060 can make sense if you have a gfx-card.

Still, all I see people demonstrate is Doom, Elite or Sys-info.

If you want to use whd-load it is nice to have a little more snappy hardware than let's say standard A500, A1200. The thing is that something like Furia will make whd-load feel just as fast as almost anything out there and it will run 99% of the games perfect.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

I agree with nikosidis, WHDload games on RTG screens are much better but you pay the price of compatibility, not all games work well, some are fast others slow and some don't work with powerful CPUs.

The Vampire is a nice machine but it's too fast for old software including games, it's too slow for modern software like Porting of PC games Complex emulators and more that makes use of Hollywood, GL or 3D.

[grond]

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

WHDload games on RTG screens

What?

[videofx]

Thanks!

Great discussion. I am learning a lot!

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Originally Posted by grond

What?

I don't know what my English by "Google translator" said , I'm talking about WHDLoad games running from an RTG screen !

[kamelito]

V2 is dead EOL.
V4 for A1000 not out yet (last quarter)
Pistorm is slower do less but it is cheap.
http://www.apollo-computer.com/v2000.html

[rare_j]

Is anybody here using a Pistorm yet?
Interested in first-hand experiences.

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by rare_j

Is anybody here using a Pistorm yet?
Interested in first-hand experiences.

I have a PiStorm, I've not used it a great deal as initially I had some issues where I damaged it soldering the header but a friend sorted it for me and it's all up and running now.

It was fairly easy to setup, install the hardware, install a basic OS to the Pi and run some commands to install the PiStorm software, the grab from the Github comes with a lot of useful utilities to get you started and to access the Pi you just need to use FTP over Wifi and then you can transfer your Kickstart files, HDFs, etc.

It's basically like using an an Amiga/emulator 50/50 and gives about the speed of an 040 @33mhz (most stable emulating an 020 at the moment about 20 MIPS.)

I didn't manage to get the RTG working (maybe an issue with the version of P96 I was using) but will revisit but I had OS3.2 all working fine and it seemed pretty responsive.

It's quite early days, I'm sure they will polish it a lot more and add more features, I know there are some issues with chip ram access slowing down some games and demos but I didn't really test much yet.

Of course it's nowhere near as fast as the Vampire and there is some wait for the Pi to boot before the Amiga loads whereas my Vamp is up and running in seconds.

For the OP, I'd suggest get on the waiting list for a Vampire if you want one, the new ones sound like they will be really good and if you change your mind you can always remove you interest.

Have a play with a PiStorm in the meantime, it's fun to tinker with, think of it as a project for now.

[nikosidis]

Originally Posted by rare_j

Is anybody here using a Pistorm yet?
Interested in first-hand experiences.

I have it and tested it. It went into the drawer.
Most games, demos I tried did not work as should.
Wrong speed, bugs etc.
I have a feeling it will never be compatible enough for games, scene stuff.

For RTG stuff, running Amiga programs it can be good.

If you want it I'm glad to sell it

[grond]

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

I don't know what my English by "Google translator" said , I'm talking about WHDLoad games running from an RTG screen !

"Running from" as in started by clicking on an RTG screen? What influence would the type of screen a game is started from have? To my knowledge no WHDload game can run on an RTG screen because they are programmed to run on Amiga screens and can't get promoted.

[turrican9]

Originally Posted by grond

"Running from" as in started by clicking on an RTG screen? What influence would the type of screen a game is started from have? To my knowledge no WHDload game can run on an RTG screen because they are programmed to run on Amiga screens and can't get promoted.

He probably meant the iGame ui. In the sense higher resolution out in the workbench shows the iGame list in RTG?

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by nikosidis

I have a feeling it will never be compatible enough for games, scene stuff.

That's a bit unfair. The current proto3 firmware has some problems, namely the interrupt handling and chip ram speed (not as much) effect some of the games too much. This is being worked on in the background and the new proto4 firmware should address all those issues once it is released.

The piSCSI hard disk implementation can mount HDF files directly on the pistorm. The speed is lightning fast, basically everything is loaded instantly.

The RTG works REALLY well (using HDMI out of the rPI), even games like ZDoom, Hexen, Heretic, Descent, ... run well, with quite decent fps - if you are into that sort of thing on amiga. You can use any resolution basically, also get an option of setting the aspect ratios and smoothing when the resolution does not match the rPI's output.
Even stuff like Shapeshifter works like it should, you get a really speedy MAC as a bonus

With the A314 "emulation" we now have network connectivity through the rPI's wifi, getting speeds of over 400kb/s which is really nice and stable.
You can transfer files through the network or directly mount rPI's directories on the amiga (speed of those is not that great though).

Overall the piStorm is a great "accelerator", if you like to fiddle around with all the configuration options you will get a great "modern" amiga out of your A500 For beginners it might not be the best option though, could be a bit frustrating. But as I said, it is being VERY actively developed by several really good developers so there will definetly be huge improvements in the future.