Hi there,
mine arrived pretty quick, i think I've had it about a week or so now. i've not done anything too in-depth apart from the usual benchmarks to go "wow" at, and played a bit of quake/Q2/settlersa couple of teething problems, but every single one was down to me being either blind or stupid. i've not flashed any other cores on to it that it was shipped with yet. things to note.
1. the 44pin IDE port is round the other way compared to my v2 based V1200, so i need a riser or short male-female cable to use my horizonal "disk-on-module" units as they get in the way of the 40pin IDE header, and don't sit properly - but that's a "me" thing. 2. related, make sure whatever you're plugging into the IDE port is pushed down on the pins properly. i re-imaged 3 CF cards with various r59coffin and ApolloOS images using a few different flash burners before i realised that my CF card adapter wasn't sat down all the way. again, another "me" thing, and not the fault of the card. 3. the standard onboard A1200 IDE port is "masked" by the icedrake's IDE at the moment with the core i have, so i can't run both at the same time like i could with the later cores for the V2-V1200. not an issue, just an observation. As previously, this may change in the future... 4. if you are using r59 coffin or anything other than apolloOS i'd guess, then install the latest SAGA rev.2.8 driver pack. the v4net.device on the standard r59coffin install (version 2.6) is a little rough around the edges, and version 3.0 of the v4net.device is a massive improvement. i was getting about 1.2+mega*bytes* a second over the network using version 3 of the v4net.device- which is about comparable to a netgear FA401 using the cnet16.device on a v2 V1200
(comparitive network testing done using AmiTCP - roadshow was able to get up to 1.8megabytes a second on the FA401+v2V1200, which i figured was limited to the standard A1200 Gayle controller - not done that test on the icedrake yet) 5. the ability for the icedrake to pretty much nail all standard aga output out of it's DIGITAL-VIDEO port is a big win. apparently there is an update in the works that will make this pixel perfect - as i have noticed a couple of tiny glitches in some demos. So this is only going to get better. what i have noticed though, is everything "feels" smoother moving windows about and general "user experience" stuff. also, having a comparatively crazy amount of ram for an amiga means that if netsurf gets stuck or something, i have enough ram just to carry on with my day and open another web browser... ----- generally, the icedrake is a great piece of kit.
I would hazard a guess, in my opinion, that a vampire loaded A1200 is pretty much "peak classic" amiga, as you don't really need the zorro slots of a big box machine - unless you have a specific use case. As the usual reasons for having a big-box machine are all completed here.
Drive controller - check,
ram - check,
RTG - check,
ethernet - check,
audio - check,
just it's all in a wife friendly keyboard sized case.
and the V4 just turns up that dial even more - with even more things in the pipeline. i'm going to do some V2 vs V4 comparative testing like Quake frame rates, graphics speed, some link-up xtreme-racing, maybe a little battlechess, but i need to clear the decks a little bit for that and i'm going to be out the country for a couple of months. so, as and when... all in all, i'm very happy with what i've got. testing done on a Rev 1.d4 A1200, standard A1200 PSU, not re-capped, and no "timing fixes" applied.
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Documentation about the Vampire hardware
