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Documentation about the Vampire hardware

Optical Drive for V4SA

Nik Jackson

Posts 4
14 Jul 2020 22:14


Hi,

Is it possible to attach an optical drive to the V4SA? I have a bunch of Amiga CD games that I would love to spin up on a Vampire?

I know it has the 44-pin Fast IDE Interface with Up to 19 MB/s data transfer speed, but just want to make sure there is no compatibility issues if using an adapter/converter with an optical drive. Thanks!


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
15 Jul 2020 07:14


Hi Nik!
 
While in theory you can add and use an optical drive to the V4, I would not recommend to do it.
I would also not recommend to use an optical drive in any old Amiga 500/600/1200.
 
As you might know, optical drives will draw a lot of power.
And optical drives will also have power peaks when they spin up.
This means that for a short time they will pull a lot power.
 
In my opinion the old AMIGA mainboards and their power supplies
are not designed to support this. The same is true for the power supply of the V4.
 
If you build up an old AMIGA 500 with Vampire and heavy consuments like optical drives or big HD then I see the risk that you have peak situations in which more power is drawn then coming.
This can lead to system running not fully stable.
For example peak power draw leading to peak with not enough power can create a ripple on the power for the CPU or for the fast memory and these can create issue like memory errors or bit flips.
Also your CF card or HD might suffer errors like bit flips.
 
I think that power management is an often overlooked fact. And if you overstretch the power consumption you can create instable systems or even system which look stable at first glance but are plagued with rare random data corruption.
 
I also have some original CD32 CDs game ...
I wonder, if it would be the easiest and the most comfortable solution to copy the CD to the CF drive or SDcard?
SD cards are very inexpensive and for the price of a BigMac Menu I can probably put each and every existing AMIGA CD games on just on SDcard.
 
What do you think?


Niclas A
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 219
15 Jul 2020 11:02


Gunnar do you know a way to get cd audio tracks also?
Could not find any way before, but its been a long time since i last checked. The only way i found back then was either a CDROM or UAE.



Nik Jackson

Posts 4
15 Jul 2020 12:24


Hi Gunnar,

First, thank you for the reply and detailed explanation! You are right in that power is all too often overlooked and your explanation makes absolute sense. I’ll give the SD card a look with something like BigMac, when I get the time I’ll give it a go and report back. I appreciate all the hard work you guys are putting forward for guys like me to enjoy the Amiga once again.

Cheers!

Nik


Smartroad 78

Posts 116
15 Jul 2020 13:13


If power is the issue, could you not just hook it up to an external power supply?


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
15 Jul 2020 13:21


smartroad 78 wrote:

If power is the issue, could you not just hook it up to an external power supply?

Adding an extra power supply is an option but  this needs be done carefully as one system being powered in parallel by 2 power supplies can suffer from ground loops or electric shifting issues.
As you might know such ground loop problems from your HIFI system. You can hear this as "humming noise" in your speakers.

The same could affect your computer but here create instability or worst case even damage your system.


John William

Posts 563
16 Jul 2020 04:27


He is right 100% on that regard. This is why on my A500 I have a 450 watt power supply that powers my Amiga 500, external 3.5" HD and dvd burner all in one power supply. It is as if I towered my Amiga 500 into a PC case and turned it into a normal PC without towering it. For me and my weird fetish, I get to enjoy my A500 in it's sexy original case and have all tangled cables and external peripherals as well as white noises and the fetish of using mechanical media devices.

So for me...my sitting is perfect. But for my V4 I want it to be a modern super ship, so everything in my V4 is SD and simple and default setting... with modern keyboard and mouse.

posts 7