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Documentation about the Vampire hardware

Failed Vampire Install A2000

Lee Langley

Posts 10
06 Sep 2019 10:13


Hi all, looking for advise. I have just brought a Vampire 2+ with CPU board for my Amiga 2000. I have installed the board and vampire fine having removed the CPU and ROM chips from the motherboard. I have an IDE adapter and CF card installed and I have left the existing workbench hard disk in the zorro slots. When I power up it just cycles the various colours on the screen, purples, greens etc and nothing at all displays on the DIGITAL-VIDEO. Anybody had these issues before?

Is it possible to mount the Vampire directly into the 68k slot rather than using the CPU board to check if this is the issue?


Andy Hearn

Posts 374
06 Sep 2019 10:38


Hey there,
i'd start with pulling out the hard disk card.
then if that works and gives you the floppy disk screen, or boots from the compact flash card, then either leave it at that, or if you want to access your old drive, i'd take the ram off of the scsi card if there is any and see if that works without the ram.

i'm just working with info i've seen from other people and their expirience, but any zorro card that has ram, and allows DMA to/from that ram may have problems.
if i recall correctly, this was the deal with the GVP scsi cards.
however if you are running an A2091 card, there may also be the issue of conflicting scsi.device controlers in the system. the scsi.device from the IDE adapter on the vampire, and the A2091's scsi.device.

hence why i've seen people have success with octagon scsi cards, as they neither have ram, nor identify as scsi.device in the system.

i run my Vampire with the rom installed - it can't hurt to pop it back in to see if it's missing something from the rom.

but yes, with the vamp in the 68k socket that should be fine. i've seen someone run a load of dupont wires from the socket to the bottom of the vampire to run it in the A2000's 5.25" drive bay to be able to access the CF and microSD slots.
if the vamp was on a cpu slot adapter card, you'd have to pull the 68k out of the socket anyway.

hope this is of some help, and that someone with more relevant A2000 expirience can jump in on this too


Pedro Cotter
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 308
06 Sep 2019 10:41


Hi,
remove everything, mount the Vampire in the 68k slot and try.
What revision is your A2000 board?


Roy Gillotti

Posts 517
06 Sep 2019 11:47


Was this A2000 known working before putting the vampire in it? They're notorious for having the battery leak and causing a ton of damage.
 
  The PSU could also be source of an issue, not only aging PSU could start failing, but the A2K PSU also provides a TICK clock signal, if that isn't working you can get unexpected issues. I'm at work so I can't provide all the details, but there is a jumper that switches the TICK clock signal from the PSU to the Vsync clock. It's what I had to switch to when I switched out the internals of the A2K PSU to a regular ATX PSU regular ATX PSU lacks that clock reference. Maybe worth a shot just changing it out.
 


Ronnie Beck
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 199
06 Sep 2019 12:03


Lee Langley wrote:

When I power up it just cycles the various colours on the screen, purples, greens etc and nothing at all displays on the DIGITAL-VIDEO. Anybody had these issues before?

Yes.  In my case it stopped at the colour yellow and went no futher.  I luckily had a second adapter for the A2000 CPU slot and tried that.  With the second adapter it worked fine.

Which colour does it stop at for you?

Lee Langley wrote:

Is it possible to mount the Vampire directly into the 68k slot rather than using the CPU board to check if this is the issue?

Yes. Do this!


Lee Langley

Posts 10
06 Sep 2019 14:53


Thanks for the replies everyone. I have stripped back the Amiga 2000 so no HDD or memory expansion and its till failing, sits at a green screen...no output beyond on the RGB out or the DIGITAL-VIDEO connector.

I will try mounting the vampire in the CPU socket however which way around should it go, its likely that it wont fit if I mount if heading left as the CPU socket is in the way (does that make sense)?
I dont want to mount it the wrong way around as ive heard this can kill the machine?


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
06 Sep 2019 14:59


Lee Langley wrote:

Is it possible to mount the Vampire directly into the 68k slot rather than using the CPU board to check if this is the issue?

Yes put the Vamp directly in the CPU socket.


Lee Langley

Posts 10
06 Sep 2019 15:01


Issue resolved and totally my fault. IDE cable was not connected correctly!!
Total arse hole mistake. thanks for the replies


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
06 Sep 2019 15:05


Happy to hear that your problem is solved


Andy Hearn

Posts 374
06 Sep 2019 15:18


happens to the best of us :)
glad you're back up and running again!


Roy Gillotti

Posts 517
06 Sep 2019 15:40


No Magic Smoke or burned traces I call it a win.

posts 11