Vampire or PiStorm?

[grond]

Originally Posted by turrican9

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

I don't know. This sounds like he believes that the Vampire and/or the PiStorm could run WHDload games on RTG screens (which is, of course, impossible):

"WHDload games on RTG screens are much better but you pay the price of compatibility, not all games work well"

I believe both the PiStorm and the next gen Vampires are supposed to offer some way of capturing or cloning the Amiga RGB signal and to fuse the RGB and RTG signals to a single video signal. Certainly a handy feature.

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by grond

I don't know. This sounds like he believes that the Vampire and/or the PiStorm could run WHDload games on RTG screens (which is, of course, impossible):

"WHDload games on RTG screens are much better but you pay the price of compatibility, not all games work well"

I believe both the PiStorm and the next gen Vampires are supposed to offer some way of capturing or cloning the Amiga RGB signal and to fuse the RGB and RTG signals to a single video signal. Certainly a handy feature.

This was already displayed on the piStorm's discord beta test channel and is currently being developed. Looking really good too... There is an adapter under the Denise chip (similar to RGB2HDMI one) that connects to the camera port of the rPI to capture the native output and then display it through hdmi ...

[Glen M]

Well I've been playing with a pistorm on and off for a couple of months. I haven't used a vampire so can't comment on that front but if you want cheap RTG solution for your Amiga the storm is hard to look past. I've tested various games and not had many issues although to be fair most stuff I've been testing is RTG software (I've other Amigas for classic software) and all of that so far works fine. ScummVM RTG works well with some titles. The Dig is a good example the audio can be a bit choppy but the games plays fine. Workbench itself is just beautiful to see in RTG. I haven't done anything with the networking side of things yet.

Its not hard to setup. I came at it from a complete newb point of view, I've never done anything with a pi before but following the step by step on the github and it was setup in an hour, would have been a lot quicker if I wasn't recording it at the same time. In fact I've since went back and recreated everything using the updated guide and 15 minutes get you going.

The only issue I've run into is cooling, the PI get very hot in my A500+ case and was throttling so a heatsink and fan is required but thats not hard to sort.

I'd encourage you to at least give it a try. Total cost is about £50 by the time you get the storm, then the pi and cables etc. Its a high demand device so if you decide you don't want it, there will be no issue moving it on later.

[rare_j]

Thanks all for sharing your experiences!
Sounds like a super fun project with lots of expansion potential.

[kriz]

A vampire is for sure a nice investment, but as of now few new models are available (
LAST UNITS CPU Accelerator for A500/A1000/A2000 is available it seems @ http://www.apollo-computer.com/order.htm ) But for sure pistorm is very interesting, and i will buy one for my 1200s if it becomes available.. Get em both

[AMIGASYSTEM]

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.

It depends, if you use WinUAE the WHDLoad games run from an RTG screen (even if not real) work fine except for a few games, and the speed problems mentioned, as said they seem to have a better quality, you should try them

[slaapliedje]

Originally Posted by nikosidis

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.

Let's be fair... who would watch a video of "Look how fast this 060 renders fonts in Pagestream!" I mean... I would. But not many would...

Edit: It turns out the V4SA doesn't run Pagestream 5.x all that well...

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by tomcat666

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

Cool, would like to see ZDOOM RTG and BOOM RTG running on the rPi, any chance of a video?

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Cool, would like to see ZDOOM RTG and BOOM RTG running on the rPi, any chance of a video?

Sure, here it is:

[ Show youtube player ]

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by tomcat666

Sure, here it is:

[ Show youtube player ]

Thanks, very cool to see

Seems that BOOM runs a bit quicker than ZOOM (which is expected).

[kamelito]

Originally Posted by slaapliedje

Let's be fair... who would watch a video of "Look how fast this 060 renders fonts in Pagestream!" I mean... I would. But not many would...

Edit: It turns out the V4SA doesn't run Pagestream 5.x all that well...

Under AmigaOS?

[guybrush]

I tried both and they are quite different to be honest.

Pistorm is great if you want a cheap upgrade; it is modern, it is in its infancy but developed pretty regularly; and you basically kill the used market of accelerator for the Amiga, which will drive prices back to a more acceptable level.

Vampire is great if you want to do things like play pc games (why?), output in high res the wb screen (again, why? You can get a scan doubler and be happy with it), but most of all, it is useful for showing off your sysinfo score (which btw is crushed by a raspberry pi running emulated Amiga via UAE; so the fastest Amiga is actually a RPI 4) or if you plan to use the Amiga to render video or 3d (are there people actually getting work done on an Amiga ? Or are they using gaming pc with 3080 or Quadro cards?).

If you just play games, listen to mods and use WB at acceptable resolution like 800x600 or 1024x768 with a scandoubler, you won't really see much gain with a Vampire, compared to a pistorm.

I used both on an A500; and the pistorm felt like the most logic thing to keep. Otherwise you can just put a RPI4 in an Amiga case and call the day; after all the Vampire V4 is fundamentally a standalone card running as an Amiga, so the line between what is acceptable is quite blurred these days.

Some are purist and just run hardware that was made for the Amiga at that time, others don't care much about being purist and run everything from a Pi; while there is a new breed of "in between" that spend a ton of money to buy modern accelerator cards for their original hardware, where part or almost all of the hardware functionalities are on those boards, in FPGA. Whichever you pick, as far as you are happy with it that's fine; but from a usage/feasibility standpoint, the most convenient order is

Pi4 -> Pistorm -> Vampire

[brufnus]

Originally Posted by rare_j

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

I bought a TF534 initially but couldn't make it work on my CDTV, so I invested in a Pistorm and RPi instead. I had a few setup problems initially; among other things I had to disable the CDTV specific functions by removing J15 (should be addressed with a new firmware release, Proto4 most likely), and I also had to use the experimental firmware rather than the standard one.
Once I had it running though, it was very impressive and actually very stable indeed. I don't play many games though, so I can't really say how it behaves with respect to those, but my Pinball Dreams works flawlessly, as does the Kefrens Desert Dreams demo.
My hard drive transfers are roughly ten times faster than with the SCSI card, and when I tried Emu68 instead of the Musashi a few days ago, I was amazed about the speed it runs with - some 800 MIPS IIRC! c".)

The Musashi still offers more though, and since I don't really need that speed I'll stick with that one for a while. But it's a very good accelerator I think, especially when considering the price. I haven't any regrets with respect to investing in this one! :-D

[DiabloV]

I have both

the pistorm is great, but no network support and pi 4 not supported.

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by DiabloV

I have both

the pistorm is great, but no network support and pi 4 not supported.

Both things are being actively worked on. Compute Module 4 which is almost identical to rpi4 is already supported.

[SimonV]

Originally Posted by DiabloV

I have both

the pistorm is great, but no network support and pi 4 not supported.

I have a Pistorm and an old xsurf running Emu68k and under Mushashi there is network support. And PI4 not supported ... How is that even an argument ? That's like saying don't buy a Vampire because they didn't use faster FPGA while it was on the market.


That PI4 support is around the corner but Vampire V5 not so much I think.

[Promilus]

@SimonV - Pi4 is around for well over 2 yrs now and Pi3 isn't quite as available as it was in it's prime. Lack of Pi4 support to this day is rather alarming. There's CM4 support for (still beta) PiStorm32 but to this date I've seen no indications to any, even alpha stage, support for Pi4 PiStorm. And I know it has different GPIO structure along with different interrupts etc. But in the meantime Apollo already developed and released new accelerators v4 derived which also takes some effort. I can't complain though as PiStorm isn't about making business. It doesn't change the fact Pi4 support (and PiStorm32) are already delayed significantly from initial projections. As for "faster FPGA" - there is not that much difference when it comes to commercial mass produced, affordable and readily available FPGAs. So no, you can't get much faster with that technology. You might with ASIC but that costs a lot.

[Lemaru]

Originally Posted by Promilus

@SimonV - Pi4 is around for well over 2 yrs now and Pi3 isn't quite as available as it was in it's prime. Lack of Pi4 support to this day is rather alarming. There's CM4 support for (still beta) PiStorm32 but to this date I've seen no indications to any, even alpha stage, support for Pi4 PiStorm. And I know it has different GPIO structure along with different interrupts etc. But in the meantime Apollo already developed and released new accelerators v4 derived which also takes some effort. I can't complain though as PiStorm isn't about making business. It doesn't change the fact Pi4 support (and PiStorm32) are already delayed significantly from initial projections. As for "faster FPGA" - there is not that much difference when it comes to commercial mass produced, affordable and readily available FPGAs. So no, you can't get much faster with that technology. You might with ASIC but that costs a lot.

The Pi4 is supported and working with the PiStorm32 Lite. The first batch of PiStorm32 boards are being sent out to testers any day now. The Lite version also works with Pi Zero2, Pi 3a+/b+ and CM4 with a custom designed carrier board that is being produced. So not sure why you think there's a lack of Pi4 support.

It's even working with a Pi400 (not that it's very practical)

https://twitter.com/Claude1079/statu...rDxYPxlfw&s=19

Once PiStorm32 is released to testers and Devs, the plan is to backport some the functionality to the original PiStorm boards. Michael Schulz already has plans for Pi4 support in Emu68 once the CM4 development is done.

The delays for the original version of PiStorm32 was mainly due to component shortages, hence why the Lite version was produced to overcome this as it uses a cheaper and readily available FPGA

[Promilus]

PiStorm32 Lite is alpha stage as the boards just arrived 1.5 month ago to a very limited number of developers. Not even users. And it's A1200 design, not the original A500/1000/2000 or A600 with adapter. So I'll ask directly then - is there - at this very moment - classic PiStorm supporting Raspberry Pi 4?

So not sure why you think there's a lack of Pi4 support

On-going development isn't the same as support.

I know it is hard, I know there are obstacles... chip shortages affects Apollo products as well. And yet they did deliver quantity of new products. I'm not casting blame or anything. Just keeping perspective, especially when it comes to a topic with such title. So... atm there's no readily available solution to users with Pi4, right? Right. And that's just what it was all about.

[Lemaru]

Considering the original PiStorm is still classed as in beta stage, then yeah, the PiStorm32 is alpha indeed.

Your previous comment stated.....

There's CM4 support for (still beta) PiStorm32 but to this date I've seen no indications to any, even alpha stage, support for Pi4 PiStorm

I was merely providing evidence that the Pi4 is working with PiStorm32 as you had not seen any.

Regarding the original PiStorm and Pi4's, some people do have these working by using the PiStormX firmware and running the make command to build Musashi for the Pi4. But yes, you are correct, there is currently no "official" support for the Pi4, though it is coming.


I think what many people tend to forget when comparing the two, is that Apollo products (Vampires and the V4 range) are commercial products costing 600eur with many years development behind it. Whereas, PiStorm is a hobby project that can be built for around 25-30eur plus the cost of a Pi. The bonus I guess is being open source, anyone can contribute to the development. They both have their benefits and uses.