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Documentation about the Vampire hardware

Used V500 Black RGB Screen, Vamp Logo On Hdmi

Joe Hick

Posts 11
12 Aug 2020 21:06


Hello, I recently bought a used v500. I grew tired of waiting for for over a year.

It worked fine for a couple days. Then it stopped working. It is a green board with the power-fix done.

The card was in a rev 6.x amiga 2000 and worked great. Now all I get is a black screen on the native rgb output, on the digital out hdmi I get the vampire logo.

The power light is lit on the vampire, but the act light only flashes for a second when I first turn the machine on. I have tried many different cores all with the same results, except for gold core 2 the act light comes on and stays on when I turn the machine on.

I have tried the board in 2 different a2000, and one rev 5 a500 same results. PSU's are good and have been recapped and tested, same with the amiga's. All the amiga's boot and run 100% with amiga roms and 68000 copu's installed, the a2k's have been tested with ff40, and a2630 cards and work fine. I have no addon hardware installed when testing the vampire.

Does anyone have any idea what could be the cause?




Eric Gus

Posts 477
12 Aug 2020 23:48



  if the underlying Amiga has a problem the Vampire wont work either.. These machines are getting on in years, expect breakdowns outside of the Vampire .. but most certainly will impact using the Amiga under any conditions..

Also check for any bent/broken pins.


Joe Hick

Posts 11
13 Aug 2020 00:01


I just checked the pins once again, and none bent or broken.

All the machines work good, and I have been over them thoroughly prior to installing the vamp.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
13 Aug 2020 07:21


Can you enter early boot menu?
(Press both mouse buttons on reset)


Joe Hick

Posts 11
13 Aug 2020 11:09


No, I can't get to early boot up.

Power LED is bright, ctrl+a+a will reset/reboot the machine.
But nothing ever shows on rgb.

I have tried putting kick.rom on sd card, no change


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
13 Aug 2020 11:30


joe hick wrote:

I have tried putting kick.rom on sd card, no change

Loading kick.rom from SDcard is only working on V4.
 
Do you have CF card or HD or anything like this attached?

What you had the card in the A2000, where was it there plugged?


Joe Hick

Posts 11
13 Aug 2020 12:53


The card was in the 68 pin cpu socket. I have since tried it in a kipper a2k vampire adapter.

I had a right angle cf card adapter plugged into it, and have tried removing the cf2ide adapter.


Knight Stone
(Needs Verification)
Posts 136/ 1
13 Aug 2020 13:04


if you put the 68K back in the socket, does RGB come back?


Joe Hick

Posts 11
13 Aug 2020 13:09


If I put the original rom and cpu in the machine's they work perfect as they should


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
13 Aug 2020 13:45


joe hick wrote:

The card was in the 68 pin cpu socket. I have since tried it in a kipper a2k vampire adapter.

The card is now where in A2000?
Is it now in the A2000 adapter or in the CPU socket?

I'm not a fan of this adapter.
Please mind that if you plug it in the adapter and have the 68000 in the CPU socket in your A2000 - you will create a short circuit!


Joe Hick

Posts 11
13 Aug 2020 13:52


Right now it is in an a500, I only put it in the 2000 because my a500 was in the closet. I have since pulled the a500 out, figured I had an 040+ram+gfx for my a2k the vampire would be better in the a500.

I don't recall if I pulled the cpu out of the a2k when I went to test the adapter... Would it short out something serious?

Is there a diagnostic core or something that may give me more info?



Ronnie Beck
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 199
13 Aug 2020 14:09


If I recall correctly, the install instructions do warn against connecting the vampire in the CPU slot before you remove the CPU.  That said, I did exactly that myself.  My A2k didn't appear to suffer any problems as a result.


Ronnie Beck
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 199
13 Aug 2020 14:18


joe hick wrote:

The card was in the 68 pin cpu socket. I have since tried it in a kipper a2k vampire adapter.
 
  I had a right angle cf card adapter plugged into it, and have tried removing the cf2ide adapter.

I have 2 right angle adapters.  Neither work.  I have the kipper2k adapter and this did work for me but it is just oriented wrong.  If it is the case that the Vampire worked when it was connected in the CPU socket but not when you connected it via the slot, it could simply be that your CPU slot is broken.

A random thought: Is there any corrosion on the board or did it suffer any battery acid damage in the past?

I bought an A2k on eBay and the seller was very skilled at hiding the damage done by battery acid.  Instead of replacing the CPU socket, he jammed some copper wire in the pin holes so the CPU could still make contact.  When I removed the CPU, the socket pins disintegrated.  Upon further inspection I found damage on the ROM socket as well.  It all worked when I got it but as soon as I started poking around........


Joe Hick

Posts 11
13 Aug 2020 14:47


I usually had a ff40 in the a2k I had removed and removed the 68k when I first got the vampire to test it out. The a2k is clean, it is my first amiga 2000 I had bought new 100 years ago or so, Battery was removed before it did damage, and a coin cell put in place. The machine is in good shape, it is my baby and takjen well care of.

The other machines it has been tested in are in ok shape, and have been tested extensivly. I repair Amiga's for friends around the area


Joe Hick

Posts 11
15 Sep 2020 02:25


Hello again,
  I have been doing a bunch of testing on this card...
If I try to go into TOS mode, I see activity light on the vamp flash and floppy tries to read but that is it still nothing.

If I flash gold3 alpha core, I can get early boot menu on the rtg screen, and I can boot up from CF card, mouse is really flakey, but keyboard works fine, vcontrol gives all proper info and all board info reports perfect.

If I flash to one of the stable released cores 2.0 all the way to the latest core 2.13 various different x10/11/12. Nothing works no floppy, no ide, no early boot screen and I still just get the vamp logo screen on the hdmi output.

Anyone have any idea what else I could try?


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
15 Sep 2020 06:45


joe hick wrote:

Anyone have any idea what else I could try?

Hi Joe,

Is your card now in the A500 or A2000?
If it is in the A2000 , is it there in the 68000 socket or on the extra card?



Joe Hick

Posts 11
15 Sep 2020 10:59


Howdy Gunnar,
    I haved put it in an a500. I figured it was is easier for trouble shooting. The PS has been tested and is good. I have since got my hands on 2 other v500 cards and they work good in the machine.
 

edit: btw thanks for trying to help with this issue


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
15 Sep 2020 11:12


From what you say, it sounds to me like this card has some issues with talking to Amiga bus.
 
The Gold3 core uses the Amiga bus only to talk to mouse and keyboard.
And does not need it for anything else.
Gold 2 cores will of course use the Amiga chipmem and will talk all the time on the Chipbus.
This might explain the difference that you see.
 
Its hard to diagnose remote but I would guess that the card got damaged somehow.
Maybe a pin has bad contact or maybe one of the levelshifters on the bus got toasted.
I would guess that maybe this damage came when pluggin the card in the Zorro adapter.


Joe Hick

Posts 11
15 Sep 2020 23:03


Ok, thanks for the info. It gives me an idea roughly where to start looking some more.

posts 19