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Documentation about the Vampire hardware

1080p With Vampirepage  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 

Henrich Raduska

Posts 62
28 May 2020 12:19


I'm sorry, but for example the SAMSUNG B2330HD LCD (FHD) monitor + TV will display "out of range" if it reaches less than 58 Hz on the H-D-M-I input. From the preset picture modes in Coffin, only 640x480/60 and 800x600/60 worked for me without modification.
  EXTERNAL LINK 
Another user also writes here that he had to exchange a monitor with his wife to get an image. Another could not get a higher resolution than 800x600. It all depends on the specific type of monitor, selected input and firmware version.
  I really don't want to mislead anyone, but it's just the facts.
  Over time, many monitors have passed through my hands (I am selling and repairing them over 30yrs) and many of them had a problem displaying a 1920x1080/50i signal from a set-top box or playstation.
  So user can only rely on the resolutions/framerates you mentioned as safe. (800x600 or 960x540 or 1280x720)
  Not everything that should work actually works. Sometimes it only works on paper.
 


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
28 May 2020 12:43


Henrich Raduska wrote:

I'm sorry, but for example the SAMSUNG B2330HD LCD (FHD) monitor + TV will display "out of range" if it reaches less than 58 Hz on the H-D-M-I input.
...
I really don't want to mislead anyone, but it's just the facts.

You say that this Samsung TV can not display PAL TV?




Henrich Raduska

Posts 62
28 May 2020 13:37


1. This is PC monitor with integrated TV tuner.
2. From Scart and internal TV tuner 50Hz PAL modes works
    (from A1200 standard AGA output). DblPal, EURO72, A2024 not.
3. From H-D-M-I vampire output, various 50Hz modes, preset in
    Coffin, not works and monitor says "out of range".
4. FHD from H-D-M-I works only 1920x1080/60p, not 60i or 50i.
This monitor my customer rejected before many years a go, because this monitor not work with playstation in FHD 50i. But should be.
When I played with P96 prefs, I tried a number of standard VESA timings for different resolutions and refresh rates. However, the monitor only supports a limited number of them. And according to the problems described by other users, several types of monitors have these problems.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
28 May 2020 13:54


Henrich Raduska wrote:

because this monitor not work with playstation in FHD 50i. But should be.

If a monitor NOT even works with Playstation or Xbox then I would not use it on Amiga/Vampire.

Henrich Raduska wrote:

according to the problems described by other users, several types of monitors have these problems.

In my experience P96 monitor settings are very difficult and I have often seen people have trouble with them. I think there is always a high chance that problem with monitor are caused simply by P96 config settings.


Mark Mc Fadden

Posts 36
30 May 2020 22:47


The best solution for true 1080p on the Amiga is the Warp 60 card.
    Stephen Jones( checkmate cases) has a good comparison video on warp vs vampire, about 40 mins in he talks about 1080p on the Warp EXTERNAL LINK    Warp 60 card has a dedicated arm processor as a gfx card so it's not limited by FPGA implementation.
  The Vampire is a fantastic card and the team has provided a brilliant Amiga solution so don't get me wrong on commenting on alternative solutions.
So horses for courses and all that but for 1080p at 60MHz the Warp 60 card is the solution( need to acquire your own 68060 cpu for the Warp though which is a big downside) .


Ian Parsons

Posts 230
31 May 2020 00:30


As I understand it the Artix 7 FPGA is providing the graphics card functions like the 1080P video not the STM32 ARM microcontroller which is there as a co-processor only. The fact it can do 1080P60 is likely down to the choice of FPGA or possibly the chip that sits between the FPGA and the digital video output socket.


Mark Mc Fadden

Posts 36
31 May 2020 00:44


Possibly, either way it's a separate subsystem to the cpu which seems like a better choice for 1080p/60 solution.


Ian Parsons

Posts 230
31 May 2020 01:17


To get 1080p60 out of the FPGAs used in the Vampires you would need to add a chip to take parallel 24bit RGB data and convert it to the differential signals used for the digital video output. Something like the AD9889b as used in the Mega SG and Super NT.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
31 May 2020 03:54


Mark Mc Fadden wrote:

Stephen Jones( checkmate cases) has a good comparison video on warp vs vampire

 
The Warp is certainly a great a card.
The warp team did excellent work and I'm very happy that the Amiga community has these developers, which I met in person and which are also very nice people.

And folks if you consider to buy the WARP, then do it!
These people behind this card are genuinely nice people which deserve to be supported!

 
But is this comparison good? 
In my opinion, is it not.
 
It looks to me like Steve's Vampire system seems to be very badly setup.
Steve either has a very old and slow core or Steve has the drivers not correctly installed.
   
With a recent setup and drivers the Vampire scores about four times the Mips of a 68060@50 MHz.
   
Another example is the 2.4 MB/sec IDE speed he claims.
If correctly setup the Vampire should get over 12 MB/sec = 5 times his speed.
 
Also I get on my system MUCH faster GFX scores on the Vampire than Steve. Again it looks like Steve did not setup his drivers right.
 
   
Steve for no doubt invested a lot time and effort to make this movie.
What confuses me a lot here is that if Steve goes this effort to do such a nice and long video - why does he not seem to care that his system is correctly setup?
 

I wonder how a smart guy like Steve seems not to notice that is setup of the Vampire is not correct and not up to date.
Steve, how can this be?
 
 
I personally think the Warp is a great card.
And I think the Vampire is also a great card.
Both card have different strength for sure.
And both are good choices for buyers.
 
I think the Warp is good enough that it stands on its own
without doing an unfair comparison by setting up the Vamp badly.
 
What do you think?


Stefano Briccolani

Posts 586
31 May 2020 07:06


Stephen did a very good review of V500 on March 2018. Even in that review the ide speed was very, very low. I think he had no idea that fast-ide speed could be activated, but he just received his card, so it was OK. Even the core was one of the first with FPU. It seems to me that he didn't touched-updated his Vampire since that video. I don't know if this was a precise choice but for sure before doing a comparative video he should have downloaded latest core (there's even a public x12 for V500) and before asserting that the ide is 2.6 mb he should have asked about it (on technical notes refers to 10mbs, so it was pretty obvious that there was a problem to solve).
  I like the guy, he have done very good cases.. but this comparison video seems too biased to me.


Stefano Briccolani

Posts 586
31 May 2020 07:39


I made a post under his video (as did Apollo-member guybrush, I see).
Hope he will soon make an updated and more fair video comparison.



Vladimir Repcak

Posts 359
31 May 2020 17:57


I find the Warp560 intriguing due to 400 MHz ARM which, if programmed accordingly, could work as a parallel gfx card, thus completely offloading 95% of CPU power that is now used for rasterizing 3D scene.

However, they're two guys, working in a free time.

How long is it going to take for them to create and ship -say- 1,000 boards ?

A year from now, it will be interesting to revisit - how many boards are actually out there. Right now, it's less than 10...


Stefano Briccolani

Posts 586
31 May 2020 18:09


Real 68060 Rev6 are very rare and there are a lot of Chinese rebranded Rev6 that are previous revisions or lack fpu or worse. And only revision 6 can be pushed to 100 mhz. Even warp guys don't have them in stock.
  You have to send your 68060 to solder when you buy a Warp. Then hope it's a real rev 6
  Selling 1000 warps will be nearly impossible in my opinion.
I may be wrong, obviously..


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
31 May 2020 18:20


Stefano Briccolani wrote:

  Real 68060 Rev6 are very rare and there are a lot of Chinese rebranded Rev6 that are previous revisions or lack fpu or worse.
 

 
Yes, this is sadly true.
 
There are no 68060 produced anymore since over a decade.
The chips that you can buy in china are all 20 years old used chips that are manually de-soldered, from old thrown away PCBs.

Its a sad but common practice that such chips get reprint/relabeled to make all of them appear more valuable.
 

Here is nice video showing where your 68060 come from in china:
EXTERNAL LINK   
 


Vladimir Repcak

Posts 359
31 May 2020 19:13


Oh, so that's why the price of 060 on eBay is what it is.

Is it the same with all other slower Motorola CPUs or only 060s ?

Is there a licensing issue involved perhaps or would the price of 060 manufactured in small quantities be simply astronomical (economies of scale) ?


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
31 May 2020 19:32


Vladimir Repcak wrote:

Oh, so that's why the price of 060 on eBay is what it is.

Sure the chinese refurbisher also want to eat.
People pay crazy money for these refurbished 68Ks, can you blame the chinese for taking it?
 
   
   
Vladimir Repcak wrote:

Is it the same with all other slower Motorola CPUs or only 060s ?

   
Don't worry there is enough old electronic waste the chinese can refurbish for years to create "new 68K" chips.
Even if none are in reality produced since decades.
 
But the good thing is : who cares?
You run your Amiga as hobby, so if you pay $50 for a 20 year old desoldered FPU or $100 for a 20 year old desoldered 68060 - and its crap or breaks after a few days - this not matters to none.
 
A real problem would be if such chips come into real product.
Imagine a such refurbished chips ending in a aircraft flight control system of something else important.
 
I find the idea you Amiga accelerator dies pretty harmless compared to this.

Vladimir Repcak wrote:

would the price of 060 manufactured in small quantities be simply astronomical

68060 are not produced since decades and the factury which used to produce them is also gone. The technology to build them is gone,
No way to produce them anymore - unless you build a new fab :)


Vladimir Repcak

Posts 359
31 May 2020 20:10


This casts (to me) a whole different light on all those 060 accelerators. It's really just a "pimp my ride" thing, for select few individuals.
 
  Your solution - 080 CPU within FPGA is certainly more sustainable and scalable over next few decades of our lives.
 
  You have an option, to use a high-end FPGA, to produce much faster Vampire, if you decide to do so, later in future. Like a dual-080, or an 080 with GFX accelerator. Sky's the limit with FPGA...
 
 
  That video you posted was really tense (baking in the oven to harden the black paint ? WTF ?!?) . I would be worried , just like with X360 back in the day, to turn the damn thing on, so it wouldn't break...
 


Mark Mc Fadden

Posts 36
01 Jun 2020 01:37


Honestly I was only commenting on the 1080p situation as per the thread.
I thought Steve made a great video in general even if technically incorrect regarding transfer rates and Vampire performance( which I hope he will correct)

I think it's great that the Amiga community has options now rather than only 30 year old Blizzard 060's for 1200 euro.
The Vamp and Warp each have their pros and cons but it is good to have that choice and I'm sure most of us Amiga nutters will end up with both :)


A1200 Coder

Posts 74
01 Jun 2020 06:50


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

  68060 are not produced since decades and the factury which used to produce them is also gone. The technology to build them is gone,
  No way to produce them anymore - unless you build a new fab :)

There are still a lot of old embedded systems using 68k CPUs, and they might need a CPU replacement. Back in 2014 new 68020 CPUs were started being produced again.

"68020 was a popular device for aerospace and defence electronics, and was discontinued by Freescale in November 2010."

EXTERNAL LINK 
There might be enough demand for 68060's as well to start producing them again.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
01 Jun 2020 07:13


Mark Mc Fadden wrote:

I think it's great that the Amiga community has options now rather than only 30 year old Blizzard 060's for 1200 euro.

 
The 68060 CPU did came out exactly 26 years ago.
The oldest Amiga accelerator using them will be 26/25 years old.
 
The 68060 was the last 68K CPU ever developed by Motorola.
The 68060 did came out in several revision.
The early revisions have severe bugs in them.
You might want to avoid the early ones.
Rev6 is the most recommendable to use.
As Rev6 its the most bug free and can be over clocked.
 
Originally the development team of the 68060, planned to bring out a "68060-B" chip, next year after the 68060.
The "B" version was aimed to fix a number of limitations and problems. But the "B" project was canceled by Motorola, as it was decided to stop the 68K production all together.
 
The Natami Project in 2010 included an 68060 CPU card.
Problem was that the 68060 could in 2010 not be bought anymore.
The Natami sported DDR2 Memory and the 060 CPU card included in addition 4 MB SRAM as 2nd Level cache.
I believe that NATAMI CPU card still holds several 68060 speed record. The Natami managed to overclock the 060 up to 120 MHz.
In combination with the cache ram this provided excellent performance.
 
During that time the Natami Team had a meeting with the Vize President of Motorola.
 
The reason for this meeting was to acquire genuine 68060 chips.
The only source already back then in 2010, were counterfeit chips from china.
 
The meeting was nice and the VP clearly explained to us
that even if we come with a million USD, there is no chance that Motorola can give us new 68060 chips, as the fabs and all is gone.
 
It was clear to us that the only option to revive Amiga is to produce a new 68K CPU. Aka the 68080 Project
 
 
In my opinion the WARP is great card and I would recommend you to buy one!
Its main problem is that you can only get 20 year old used, worn and torn CPU for it.

Originally the 68060 chips were sold as either 50Mhz or 60MHz version. Today the most sought after revision of the 68060 is the rev6.  Its the most bug free and can often be over clocked to 80 MHz or more.
And understand that Motorola produced also 68060 without FPU.
 
Since over a decade refurbishers from china remove the markings of the reclaimed 68060 chips and relabel them all to rev6.
Buying 060 chips in the internet was already 10 years ago a lottery.
 
The 060 was never produced in real big numbers.
A lot of the 68060 chips today are refurbished from old network routers from the 90th.
 

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