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Documentation about the Vampire hardware

Vampire V4 Testing Serial Over TTL Serial Adapter

Pedro Cotter
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 308
09 Aug 2021 18:50


Testing the V4 SPI (P22) Serial connection
using a FTDI USB to TTL serial converter

Vampire V4, #ApolloOS and Release 7 Core
PC with WinUAE, AOS

EXTERNAL LINK


Sean Sk

Posts 488
10 Aug 2021 00:02


That's very cool!
   
Unfortunately latency is still a bit too high for a picky game like Lotus 2, as I noticed you had the "PAUSED" sign flashing on the screen during gameplay. Eventually the serial connection in that game would have auto disconnected because of desync. I have experienced this myself because I have been doing similar experimentation (not with V4's). Lotus 2 serial play pretty much requires zero latency and I'm not sure that is going to be possible with the TTL to USB conversion because of the small amount of buffering involved.
   
It may be better to directly hook up two V4's via TTL or you could hook up a V4 to a real Amiga via a TTL to RS232 level shifter such as this:
   
https://www.ebay.com/itm/382224238410?hash=item58fe57074a:g:n80AAOSwttRZtkh3
 
Other games that are not as finicky as Lotus 2 should be fine, i.e Populous, Battle Chess, Knights of the Sky etc.


Pedro Cotter
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 308
10 Aug 2021 08:18


thanks for the input Sean.
I did purchase similar  RS232 to TTL Serial, waiting for them to arrive. This was more a concept test to check what is possible atm with the implemented V4 TX/RX.
Anyway, an expansion for the v4 that gives serial in/out and midi is being developed so i guess all those latency and sync will be addressed. 
Cant wait to see my Rolands connected to the V4 :-)


Sean Sk

Posts 488
10 Aug 2021 09:30


Pedro Cotter wrote:

Anyway, an expansion for the v4 that gives serial in/out and midi is being developed so i guess all those latency and sync will be addressed. 

That sounds awesome! Really looking forward to seeing these when they're released.

Myself and a friend of mine have been playing around with the Hayesduino project by Payton Byrd, as found here:
EXTERNAL LINK 
It allows Arduino Mega 2560's to act as Hayes compatible modems over Ethernet. So we have been playing some dial-up multiplayer games over the internet using these with a measure of success. We've been attempting to make some improvements to the code. Whilst my friend is a very knowledgeable coder, my understanding is very tiny to non-existent. :)  Unfortunately he doesn't always have a lot of time to work on this. Also trying to put some documentation together on the changes we've made

Thanks so much for your videos! Always enjoy watching them.

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