Where to get Vampire support

[grond]

Perhaps his behaviour changed when kipper somehow "lost" his notes on how many Vampires he sold and their serial numbers which was supposed to be the basis for the royalties he was supposed to pay. That was when the registration and grey video output were introduced.

[klx300r]

Originally Posted by johnnybarker

Yip, I think your experience echoes mine. I have to confess that I think Grond is being somewhat untruthful here. I wouldn't like to speculate whether it is by accident or design though.

I don't own a Vampire board but I can confirm that I have dealt with kipper2k for many years on numerous Amiga projects and have never had any issue with his communication and quality of work. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with Grond but would be nice to hear kipper's side of the story too.

[Vypr]

I have two A600V2 boards, one from Kipper and one from Majsta. The Kipper2k board is going strong but the one from Majsta failed less than a week after receiving it. It worked on and off for about a year until it eventually died completely and the only support I got from Apollo was "Oh, that's weird" then promptly ignored.
needless to say I'm not impressed with their business model

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Pollock

The Apollo support, is, well, non existent. At no point are you ever made aware of how long, if any, any warranty is with the product. Mine needed fixed, and i was told, "buy another one".

Is this actually true? If so, then that's really out of line. You can't be selling >400E boards and offer no hardware warranty for them (not talking about software/operational help, that's another matter).

[Pollock]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Is this actually true? If so, then that's really out of line. You can't be selling >400E boards and offer no hardware warranty for them (not talking about software/operational help, that's another matter).

Sadly, yes. That has been my experience, and quite frankly alot of others have shared a similar fate.

Mine is a Kipper 2K one, and in general the quality of it is good, Kipper gets a bad name from the Apollo guys, if infact, if they know you have a Kipper board, they don't offer any support, just, "the new ones are way better". They aint. I can imagine Kipper was busting his chops trying to get all these out, and i sometimes feel he is used as a scapegoat, for an awful business model.

Happily, they can be made better. A very kinda Amiga user not far from me, and on this thread replaced the socket on the V600 for a far better one, i had used a Furia perviously, and their socket was FAR superior, so it was changed out, and now it's bolted down, rock solid.

But forget the Apollo forum, its full of sycophants, and Gunnars threads about Machine code, and technical talk, and i mean technical.

[sean_sk]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Is this actually true?

Of course it's not true.
The guys are very helpful on the ApolloTeam Discord channel and yes, there is warranty support.

The problem is that things are in flux at the moment because multiple websites are being consolidated and tidied up and new cores are being worked on for both V2 and V4 models that will be released shortly. Things were a bit of a mess in the past, but attempts are being made to remedy that along with making sure that they'll always be stock on hand, rather than having to wait months on a waiting list.

[Pollock]

Originally Posted by sean_sk

Of course it's not true.
The guys are very helpful on the ApolloTeam Discord channel and yes, there is warranty support.

The problem is that things are in flux at the moment because multiple websites are being consolidated and tidied up and new cores are being worked on for both V2 and V4 models that will be released shortly. Things were a bit of a mess in the past, but attempts are being made to remedy that along with making sure that they'll always be stock on hand, rather than having to wait months on a waiting list.

Cobblers.

it is true. i can link to a thread, infact many, many threads asking for help, for the last few years, way before any "flux".

their support is shambolic. appauling.

[sean_sk]

Originally Posted by Pollock

Cobblers.

it is true. i can link to a thread, infact many, many threads asking for help, for the last few years, way before any "flux".

their support is shambolic. appauling.

At the time that you bought your V2 from Kipper2k, the project was split into two sections. Kipper was doing the hardware manufacturing and FPGA cores were being done by Gunnar and his team. Gunnar was not responsible for the design and manufacture of those cards, Majsta and Kipper were.

So if you had hardware issues that needed to be looked at under warranty then you needed to direct your enquiries to Kipper, NOT Gunnar.
Obviously things are different now because Gunnar and his team are now responsible for both.

So NO! It's not true!

[Pollock]

Originally Posted by sean_sk

At the time that you bought your V2 from Kipper2k, the project was split into two sections. Kipper was doing the hardware manufacturing and FPGA cores were being done by Gunnar and his team. Gunnar was not responsible for the design and manufacture of those cards, Majsta and Kipper were.

So if you had hardware issues that needed to be looked at under warranty then you needed to direct your enquiries to Kipper, NOT Gunnar.
Obviously things are different now because Gunnar and his team are now responsible for both.

So NO! It's not true!

i don't give a monkeys who made it, it was sold to me, new, as an "Apollo Vampire V600". it was sold through "Apollo", as an entity. If you bought a new Ford car, and had trouble with it, only to take it into the shop and be told, "Tom and Dick are responsible for building that engine, not Ford", you would go cherry mental, and would be quite right to do so.

And who says that was it? there have been many threads asking for all sorts of any, ANY help, and being denied it. I myself posted a thread two months ago for an error i kept getting, i was told it was a "known issue", and it was dumped.

There are many instances of being being dumped on from a great height from Apollo, not just me. I can only go from personal experience, and mine was, again, like many others, "shocking"

But where is your dog in this fight? Are you part of the team? on commission? a percentage? You obviously have some interest in this.

And don't tell me this is not true, it's from experience, maybe not the same experience you have had, but for me, Apollo being **** with support is entirely true, no matter what you think.

[sean_sk]

No I don't have any interest in this whatsoever, other than to call out crap when I read it.

Time and time again on that forum it was mentioned to people that if they had issues with their hardware that they contact Majsta. Even Majsta encouraged people to contact him, even if they had older cards made by Kipper. And from my personal experience, both Majsta and Kipper2k were both extremely helpful when it came to hardware issues.

[Pollock]

Originally Posted by sean_sk

No I don't have any interest in this whatsoever, other than to call out crap when I read it.

Time and time again on that forum it was mentioned to people that if they had issues with their hardware that they contact Majsta. Even Majsta encouraged people to contact him, even if they had older cards made by Kipper. And from my personal experience, both Majsta and Kipper2k were both extremely helpful when it came to hardware issues.

someone having a completely different experience from you, is not "calling out crap". It's just a different opinion, formed from that "different" experience.

try to remember that.

[fitzsteve]

dunno why people are getting bent out of shape, it's a 5yr old card, try walking into curry's with a 5yr old TV and see how much support you get lol

[Pollock]

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

dunno why people are getting bent out of shape, it's a 5yr old card, try walking into curry's with a 5yr old TV and see how much support you get lol

what if the TV hadn't worked right in the first 12 months, and it still hadn't been right after 5 years, would you want a resolution then?

some people have had good experiences, i am happy for them, mine needed to be stripped down and a new socket put on it, for it to even think about working properly. I guess that how it goes.

[dreadnought]

Regardless of the whole he made it-she made it debacle, it's rather difficult to find out what the warranty is at the moment. The Apollo-core website seems pretty functional and full of various info (even how to make a Paypal account) and yet when you try to find out about Warranty it either 404s or redirects to the Shipping page.

The only info I've found -

"The constructor warranty period starts on the Date of Purchase and its length is 6 months. A legal warranty of 2 years is offered by its authorized seller as asked by EU laws."

... was on some external site, in regard to V4 standalone (so most likely outdated) and full of broken wiki links.

Majsta's site is a mess, and no "big" stores seem to stock Vampires.

All this doesn't really inspire confidence. If it was about something costing under 100E, fine - it's a hobby product after all - but with these prices I'd really expect a bit more in regard to trading basics.

[daxb]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

The only info I've found -

Starting with 1. January 2022 some stuff will change with EU Directive 2019/771: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-cont...LEX:32019L0771
This includes minimum warranty time what is 12 month instead of 6 (Article 11 if I'm not wrong). So wait for next year if you buy something.

[Chucky]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Majsta's site is a mess, and no "big" stores seem to stock Vampires.

As they want to sell it themselves: as it gives more cash to them..
and well. then. just 6 months of warranty possability to sell more..

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Pollock

what if the TV hadn't worked right in the first 12 months, and it still hadn't been right after 5 years, would you want a resolution then?

I would have trashed that TV 5 years ago and bought another brand, if I didn't get the issue resolved immediately. Not promptly repairing or replacing a product that was returned because it didn't work? Shame on them. Letting an issue fester for 5 years and then insisting on a 'resolution'? Shame on you.

But perhaps my situation is a bit different from yours. Living in one of the farthest regions of the globe makes most 'grey' import warranties worthless. There is no vendor here, but if there was they would be justified in refusing to service it. Sending it back to Europe to probably never be seen again would be a dead loss, so I try to fix the problem myself or cut my losses and cannibalize the product for spares.

I bought my Vampire from Vesalia - half expecting it either never arrive, be flaky or not work at all, and brick when upgrading the firmware (if I could even manage to get it registered). I was pleasantly surprised when none of that happened and it has continued to work fine (except for the SD Card slot, but I assume that's just because I don't have a compatible card - no big deal).

Had my pessimism proved accurate I would have just shrugged and thought about all those other Amiga accelerator cards that didn't work properly back in the day. Ah, the memories. It's all part of the retro computing experience!

BTW guess what warranty my electronic component suppliers give me? That's right, it's void the moment I apply power to the parts!

[grond]

Originally Posted by Pollock

i don't give a monkeys who made it, it was sold to me, new, as an "Apollo Vampire V600". it was sold through "Apollo", as an entity. If you bought a new Ford car, and had trouble with it, only to take it into the shop and be told, "Tom and Dick are responsible for building that engine, not Ford", you would go cherry mental, and would be quite right to do so.

However, you are arguing the opposite thing. You bought a card through kipper (the shop) and now went to the headquarters of Ford and expect to get your car fixed by the white-collar people you find there. It's the shop that has to deal with warranty, not the licensor who permitted kipper to build and sell cards.

[Chucky]

Originally Posted by grond

However, you are arguing the opposite thing. You bought a card through kipper (the shop) and now went to the headquarters of Ford and expect to get your car fixed by the white-collar people you find there. It's the shop that has to deal with warranty, not the licensor who permitted kipper to build and sell cards.

except you can bring that ford to ANY authorised reseller of that ford to have it fixed on warranty....

so. it seems you do not know how warranty works...

[Chucky]

makes me wonder.. all those boards made by Majsta. if there are any issues. is it an issue for Majsta or. Apollo team? it SHOULD be Apollo team.. but.. as things seems. it sounds like a Majsta issue. damn. putting him in a very bad position.