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Vampire and Amiga 1200page  1 2 3 

Ronnie Shortski

Posts 10
04 Aug 2016 16:06


Any news on the development of the vampire turbocard for the Amiga 1200? I heard mastja now has a pick and place machine, so assembling cards should go faster ;) thank all members of apollo core for this great project for bringing this to every amiga user..


Roman S.

Posts 149
04 Aug 2016 20:38


Probably indeed faster... yet, the A500 version is in the prototype stage. Once they start accepting orders, they will probably have 500 orders for A500 version in 500 minutes :)



Ronnie Shortski

Posts 10
04 Aug 2016 21:05


I was wondering at what pricerange the v1200 would be, after reading in an old topic, 500 euro was mentioned...if so that would be a big sum of money and that some people with a small purse does not have..
 
  i thought that the vampire should be for all amigans, if there would be a 'faster' v1200 for people with big pockets im fine with that, atleast we have a choice and get a vampire 1200!
 
 
  old topic with mentioned price:
 
  EXTERNAL LINK 
The plan is the create the world fastest FPGA based CPU card.

Our idea includes

Apollo-CPU with speed grade ~ 400 MHz 68060
Internal CPU caches of size Icache=64KB / DCache=256KB
1024 MB DDR3 Memory at 1600MHz
DIGITAL-VIDEO with Truecolor and FullHD
SDCard
SATA-Interface

As price we target 500 Euro

@Gunnar, is there a choice in v1200 cards or is there going to be only one with that pricetag?
 


Daniel Sevo

Posts 299
05 Aug 2016 01:48


Ronnie Shortski wrote:

I was wondering at what pricerange the v1200 would be, after reading in an old topic, 500 euro was mentioned...if so that would be a big sum of money and that some people with a small purse does not have..
 
  i thought that the vampire should be for all amigans, if there would be a 'faster' v1200 for people with big pockets im fine with that, atleast we have a choice and get a vampire 1200!
 
 
  old topic with mentioned price:
 
  EXTERNAL LINK 
  The plan is the create the world fastest FPGA based CPU card.
 
  Our idea includes
 
  Apollo-CPU with speed grade ~ 400 MHz 68060
  Internal CPU caches of size Icache=64KB / DCache=256KB
  1024 MB DDR3 Memory at 1600MHz
  DIGITAL-VIDEO with Truecolor and FullHD
  SDCard
  SATA-Interface
 
  As price we target 500 Euro
 
  @Gunnar, is there a choice in v1200 cards or is there going to be only one with that pricetag?
 

Its been a while since we got any official updates on the V1200 and I'm guessing its because the focus is to figure out how to speed up volume production of the V500.
That said, we already know Majsta has done some designs of the V1200. Its possible, I suppose, to do 2 versions. One with the same Cyclone III FPGA currently used and one with a much more expensive, but also much better Arria 10 FPGA + more RAM.
It would take some effort to do these two designs, but its not impossible. A lot of the features are shared by both designs.

One reason for considering a different design goal for the V1200 is probably the fact that it already IS a different design because its a TrapDoor custom 150 Edge Connector card, and not being mounted over the CPU like the V600 or in the CPU socket like the V500.
Also, there is physicially more space to do a bigger card in the A1200, so.. you know.. why not ;-)
And finally, A1200 are traditionally more interested in upgrading to high performance than A500/600 users so if ppl can pay €500 for second hand BLizzard 1260s, then maybe they can pay €500 for a 400MHz Apollo Core. I know I would ;-)



Amiga 4Life

Posts 101
05 Aug 2016 06:29


A1200 users seem to be the most (current) active user, but that doesn't mean that there are more of them
  out here... Amiga 600 users came out of the woodworks and caught majsta & kipper off buy surprise...
and this happened because we see a real product being sold/used and not talked about...(also low priced)..
   
    lmao...the pre-order at amibay is closed and people are still trying to order Apollo vampire boards....
   


Ronnie Shortski

Posts 10
05 Aug 2016 14:13


Well its a waiting game, untill they figure out to produce high volumes of vampires (demand is too high ;) ) but it seems majsta has taken some steps in that direction by using a liteplacing machine that will speed up the process, but back to the v1200.. we have to wait what specs they come up with, yes i would like a high end card..en sure i would pay 500 euro for it, but thats has to be it.. im saving up for one, because i surely want one..

maybe its because we are so exited, and we dont want to miss this bus (apollo vampire v1200) but i hope it becomes available to a lot of amiga fans, instead of the usual hoarders, with the deep pockets..

thats why i mentioned the price of the card..


Mr-Z EdgeOfPanic

Posts 189
05 Aug 2016 15:24


For now biggest problem will be how to get cheap edge connectors, or at least for a decent price.
I would buy the high spec model without hesitation though :)


Nick Fellows

Posts 176
08 Aug 2016 10:23


Im wondering if it is possible to gauge how many edge connectors might be needed? If only the socket was on the a1200 motherboard, then we wouldnt need them.


Roman S.

Posts 149
08 Aug 2016 15:52


I guess several hundreds at least.

Maybe Jens would be more willing to help if you offer him something in exchange? For example, expansion slot on each Vampire 1200 - so that he could develop and sell various extensions.

USB controllers (3.0 type C), SATA controllers, wireless serial port over Bluetooth (rfcomm), modern WiFi adapters (5 GHz bandwidth), ... Lot's of potential here.



Claudio Guglielmotti
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 185
09 Aug 2016 06:51


Maybe kipper could use a connector like this:

http://www.ebay.it/itm/Amiga-1200-MEMORY-expansion-CARD-1208-with-8-MB-on-board-/141888860574?hash=item21093c319e:g:CSEAAOxyvuVSGo~O

the problem is figuring out where to find it


Captain Zalo

Posts 71
09 Aug 2016 10:13


I've got some A1200 accelerators lying around. Would refurbishing, detinning and reusing old connectors be of interest to the devs? I guess there are several on the forum with A1200's that are willing to sacrifice hardware for the greater cause.
As my towered A1200 is slowly dying from age, I'd rather shell out cash for a stand-alone Apollo board than spending more on refurbishing the ancient rust-heap. I'll gladly donate hardware to the team if it's any use.

Off the top of my head; A Patreon-account would be great to donate some cash to the team so you don't have to burn so much of you own resources on development.


Marlon Beijer

Posts 182
09 Aug 2016 11:21


Captain Zalo wrote:

  Off the top of my head; A Patreon-account would be great to donate some cash to the team so you don't have to burn so much of you own resources on development.

This! I'd gladly support via Patreon. =)


Ronnie Shortski

Posts 10
10 Aug 2016 11:17


@Claudio

i found something, dont know if these are the right connectors??
 
  EXTERNAL LINK


Gregthe Canuck

Posts 274
10 Aug 2016 13:45



I believe a satisfactory source has been found for the connectors from what I recall from discussions on the Apollo IRC.

The price wasn't the best but was deemed to be "good enough".


Cunn Pole

Posts 29
10 Aug 2016 15:40


As long as it is cheaper than buying these EXTERNAL LINK and melting them down i'll be happy


Brian Robotham

Posts 52
10 Aug 2016 20:37


LOL. we could melt them down for the connector and still sell at a great price :)



Daniel Sevo

Posts 299
10 Aug 2016 22:20


Brian, may we ask what price range you ended up with. Personally, I'd gladly pay $25 extra for the connector, no questions asked. ;-)
From a certain point of view, $25 for a piece of plastic and some metal pins it may sound expensive, but if you ask someone to choose between not having a Vampire for the 1200 at all or pay the extra $25.. Who would say no to that? ;-)


Brian Robotham

Posts 52
10 Aug 2016 22:40


if you check sullins on digikey, farnell etc you will see that similar sized connectors are also in te $20+ range so really, it is to be expected, small price to pay overall. for us, the initial tooling costs is what will hike the price.



Szyk Cech

Posts 191
11 Aug 2016 10:19


Why can't we just 3D print that connector?!?


Andrew Copland

Posts 113
11 Aug 2016 10:50


Because of the metal bits inside it?

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