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Apollo Team Activity Report (June 2018)page  1 2 

Renaud Schweingruber
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 378
11 Jun 2018 12:59


June Activity Report
Exciting weeks lately in the Apollo Team as quite a lot of things happened in a very small timeframe on both hardware and software sides. Summer will for sure be hot in the Vampire and Amiga community. Sit down, relax and enjoy a glass of blood with us because we have several topics to cover this month.
 
Vampire V4
If your remember last Activity Report from May, we had to admit we were struggling on a bug we weren’t able to locate the source and this for weeks and weeks. During the night of 2nd of June, ceaich and BigGun finally found the reason and fixed it, definitively. Hurray !
 
Some team members were during that particular evening attending the OufParty 5 in Martigny (Switzerland). When they got the information, they instantly left the dinnertable, leaving creamy raclette and fresh white wine alone to teleport themself in front of their Vampire V4 developer boards to test that freshly baked core : for the first time ever since Neuss, the Vampire V4 worked perfectly on every Amiga 500 mainboard tested. I won’t comment what came next, mostly because I’m missing part of it and because it was mainly made from alcohol and cigars (which might explain why I’m missing those parts).
 
So from now, our next step is now to send Vampire V4 cards to all testers in team to go forward on finalizing the product before releasing it on the market.
 
Those final steps will require some time but we can now see the light out of the tunnel.
 
Software-side
I wanted to put software as second topic of this activity report because we also got some nice development in the Apollo Team cavern :
- Bax is working as always as a shaolin monk on the driver side. New SDNet and ExpNetV2 should bring new features like multicasting/SANA-II (letting you use network within ShapeShifter), while improving performance and reliability.
- Nonarkitten is working on GnGeo and is squeezing every single FPS she can out from it
- Inflammasome is working on improving his STonAmiga software
 
Card Registration
As stated in the apollo-core forum, we have announced we are closing card registration website at end of June. This had to end to serve its purpose and I will try to explain why.
 
As you might know, we have been aware that some cloned cards were in the wild that’s the reason why the registration system came to battle against such black market. Registering a card on our website allowed us to double check that we had corresponding serial number in our database and add it to our whitelist. Only « downside » of a non-registered card was the user was getting a black and white screen on Digital Output (and only beginning from GOLD2.7 cores) but could still use its card.
 
Cards coming from majsta were all already in our database, ence were « pre-whitelisted », cards coming from kippa weren’t all in that database.
 
As of today, users are all getting cards flashed with GOLD2.5 core, which doesn’t implement the whitelist system and let them already use their card out of the box in full color. This give us some time to cook new and updated GOLD2.9 cores including those serials. This system isn’t ideal as there is still a period for users to wait for an updated whitelist to flash their card and get full colors but it is the only solution to make sure cloned cards won’t offer same level of features as a legit card. We are not only protecting our IP but also customer investments here.
 
I would personnaly like to thank all people who played the game and registered their card. It was a pain not only for customers but also for team as we would have prefered to spend time on other things than building a database of serials, cooking whitelist, updating cores, etc.
 
We have also read some funny comments about GDPR regarding our registration system. It’s obvious that some more knowledge regarding what GDPR really is might be required there. We have a Privacy Policy stated on our website, directly accessible within the form, a confirmation dialog in the registration form asking for approval and we only ask for datas we require to bring users a good level of support. Datas we are processing aren’t « sensitive » (unlike medical datas, religion and sexual preference, etc.) and people pushing us on that kind of discussion field are in fact spreading FUD (but we are used to it). I’ll stop there otherwise some might think that a famous amiga hardware producer wrote that paragraph (which would require use of the usual criminal damage, slander, defamation, insults, conspiracy and some more blah blah words).

Today we think we have erradicated any will to build and sell more cloned cards. The registration served its purpose. Some users, might still not have registered their card but we will support them in that process even if registration system is closed. Just get in touch with me when needed. No worry.
 
GOLD3
BigGun announced GOLD3 for Vampire cards for this summer. We are all pretty confident that our AGA will be really super and every day core is being improved with new fixes to let us play more and more games.
 
It’s actually difficult to describe how good it feels when an AGA games runs perfectly on an OCS/ECS Amiga but each us might remember in the days how frustrating it was not being able to run them on our « Denised » miggies. This time is soon over.


Mo Retro

Posts 241
11 Jun 2018 13:21


Great News :)
Thanks for the update Renaud.


Mr Niding

Posts 459
11 Jun 2018 13:32


Thanks for the report Renaud, and for the effort you and the team puts into this project!


Gregthe Canuck

Posts 274
11 Jun 2018 13:37



Very nicely written. Thanks!!


Ronnie Beck

Posts 37
11 Jun 2018 13:55


Nice work guys!  It is always nice to read the progress that is made each month.  Great to hear things are moving swiftly.


Todd H

Posts 27
11 Jun 2018 15:12


Awesome news. My Amiga 1200 is ready for some Vampire V4 action.


Matthew Langtry

Posts 199
11 Jun 2018 16:18


Great report, can't wait to order a v4 standalone


Thomas Blatt

Posts 200
11 Jun 2018 16:32


Great report, thanks


Sebastian Blanco

Posts 148
11 Jun 2018 16:42


When the team say summer they refer to what hemisphere ?


Gernt Gerloff

Posts 49
11 Jun 2018 22:53


Lol, let me correct that for you:

We are not only protecting our IP but also punish our honest customer.


Renaud Schweingruber
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 378
11 Jun 2018 23:00


Gernt Gerloff wrote:

We are not only protecting our IP but also punish our honest customer.

 
Have you been punished ? How ?
 


Mallagan Bellator

Posts 393
12 Jun 2018 00:07


Renaud Schweingruber wrote:

Gernt Gerloff wrote:

  We are not only protecting our IP but also punish our honest customer.
 

 
  Have you been punished ? How ?
 

I will not swear on it, but I think he was joking.

Also, great news!


Gildo Addox

Posts 31
12 Jun 2018 08:14


Amazing! Thanks a lot for the repot.


Hugo Pereira

Posts 72
12 Jun 2018 10:25


Matthew Langtry wrote:

  Great report, can't wait to order a v4 standalone
 

 
  We are already 2, Matthew.
  I also look forward to the opportunity to order the V4 standalone.
 
  Thank you for another report, Renaud.
  This demonstrates the quality and seriousness of your good work. :)


Fireb0y Ozone

Posts 1
12 Jun 2018 10:36


Great news and post. Awaiting GOLD3 core with anxiety ^_^

Just a little question, i bought my V2 from Kipper, and have registered the card on the apollo site. As you said that not having the serial numbers from Kipper, my card will be blacklisted?


Mr Niding

Posts 459
12 Jun 2018 10:56


Fireb0y Ozone wrote:

Great news and post. Awaiting GOLD3 core with anxiety ^_^
 
  Just a little question, i bought my V2 from Kipper, and have registered the card on the apollo site. As you said that not having the serial numbers from Kipper, my card will be blacklisted?

I also have a kippercard, and as such registered my card, which got it whitelisted.

Follow this link;

EXTERNAL LINK


Peter Heginbotham

Posts 214
12 Jun 2018 12:18


I think this is more about a master list for serial numbers from kippper rather than end users registering thier card.

My card was from Kipper and registered it has been fine with every core update.


Pitteloud Stephane
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 69
12 Jun 2018 13:25


“ I won’t comment what came next, mostly because I’m missing part of it and because it was mainly made from alcohol and cigars (which might explain why I’m missing those parts).”
 
 
  I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about....
 
  EXTERNAL LINK


Mo Retro

Posts 241
12 Jun 2018 19:48


Pitteloud Stephane wrote:

“ I won’t comment what came next, mostly because I’m missing part of it and because it was mainly made from alcohol and cigars (which might explain why I’m missing those parts).”
 
 
  I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about....
 
  EXTERNAL LINK 

Hahaha Big Bosses Cigars :D


Przemyslaw Tkaczyk

Posts 155
12 Jun 2018 21:17


Wow. Just wow. The resemblance is UNCANNY.

EXTERNAL LINK  ("Groovy" by Lemon, 1993)

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