Vampire 500/600 and HC508 Amiga Accellerators
REVAMPED „FRIEND“ (AMIGA)

In early 2011, a man named Igor Majstorovic (Majsta) opened one of the most popular themes on local retro forums, "My accelerators for the Amiga 600 computer". In his initial post, he described his plans for the new Amiga accelerator based on FPGA (Field-programmable gate array) chip. Based on initial software simulations, without any real hardware to test on, accelerator was supposed to be better than anything previously made.
The initial motivation was to make inexpensive accelerator, using new technologies but that also ends 5-10 times cheaper than competition. Final goal has brought Majsta to a ackward position, because is was difficult to find associates at the Amiga community who were willing to share knowledge of the hardware details, as most knowledgable people are still involved in the production of expensive accelerators based on the ideas 20 and more years old. Since he was a relative novice in the world of electronics, many of the Amiga community members were openly skeptical of that being anything more than unfeasible idea. Couple of exception(al)s and few individuals from the local forums have encouraged and helped to the best of their ablities.
As a true descendant of people from ex-Yugoslavia, the Majsta was pushed by the good old defiance (Serb. Inat) and after several months of digging through old forums and gathering bits and peieces of knowledge, at the end of 2011 there was a success - post with a picture of a board titled „Vampire 600“ (the name of the accellerator board, a pun on idea it revampes the Amiga) in which it was only control diode glowing on board. Again, this success was greeted with ridicule by experienced foreign Amiga hardware boys ("watch out, he turned on the diode!"), but what they did not realize was that it was practical test of the basic hardware functionality and confirmation of correct generation of basic signals.
Shortly after a customization of an existing open source emulation of MC68000 processor (TG68) for FPGA started, which marked beginning of work on the main parts of the accelerator. It should be noted that the FPGA is not a software emulation of 68000 processor, but it is practically new compatible hardware implementation. Technically the FPGA is bunch of logic circuits whose connections can be defined externally, which is used to implement the functionality of some parts of the processor such as registers, arithmetic logic unit, control logic etc.
After several „ups and downs“, end of 2012 brought the first videos of the accelerator in operation. The initial speed was twice slower than the original processor, but as soon as the full functionality was reached, optimizations started, and two months later the accelerator was 3 times faster. That's about the moment when those who were initially ridiculing the idea started to openly contempt and sabotage the project, because they did not even think that the plain defiance could jeopardize sales of their „prices blown out of proportion“ hardware.
In mid-2013, Vampire 500 project was initiated, a variant of same accelerator, but for Amiga 500 while 600 Vampire is optimized to be faster then the 68030 25MHz and approached the speed of 68040 processor. That very same year cooperation with Apollo team begins and that's what was a turning point in the whole story because the work on the accelerator from „one person army“ has been turned to a team effort.
Apollo team continued the development of more or less collapsed Natami project, a nice try to make a FPGA based implementation of Motorola processors. What they needed was the hardware to try out their ideas and there Vampire 600 has proved to be the ideal platform. Majsta has sent several accelerators and it has started cooperation that has proven to be very sucessful up to this very day.
A team working on Vampire accelerators today has about 15 members. On the hardware front of designing the cards, Majsta is still one of the key people, and a long time involved „honorary citizen“ was Brian Robotham, (as Amiga user, known as kipper2k), author of many affordable Amiga expansions.
The main development of the processor is lead by Gunnar von Boehn (BigGun) and Christoph Hoehne (ceiach), who are on the Apollo team, more or less, from its humble beginnings. Under their leadership, the processor has gone a long way from performance barely on par with 68040, up to today's version, which is called 68080, and that goes far beyond any Motorola 68k processor, in terms of speed, the instruction set and internal organization. Namely, when the goal of making the fastest version compatible Motorola 68K family was archieved, question was „why just keep at it (when one can go further)?“. In the last 30 years the x86 world saw the expansion of its instruction set with many concepts that were initially developed for the former supercomputers,  and one of the most important was the introduction of the first vector commands for acceleration of  multimedia data, known as MMX/SSE. Following the example, 68080 got AMMX set of instructions, so the Amiga could qualify for smoother playback of video and audio materials. 68080 processor belongs to the group Super Scalar processors (allowing execution of multiple commands in parallel during single CPU cycle) and contains newer and much faster memory controller (DDR3 in new Vampire V4 allowing 1GB/s). With all the new standards that are being developed, a significant part of the work is performed by the people who test the new versions of the Apollo core (processor and chipset), and here again we have one of „ours“ - Danilo Lisinac, a testing expert and as he says, "he is charge of that something gets broken". Danilo is a most responsible for Vampire cards Electromagnetic Conformity testing required for CE certification.
 
Hardware

As we know by now, first Vampire card was made for Amiga 600, while today there are two versions, Vampire 600 V2 for the Amiga 600 and Vampire 500 V2 + for the Amiga 500. Internally, both cards are very similar, with only difference in physical appearance and connector to the Amiga. Current publicly available version of the firmware (actually FPGA core update) for both cards is GOLD2 (V.3686 of 23.01.2017.). Versions since GOLD 2.7 require registration. Both designs share same Altera Cyclone 3 FPGA chip (68 080 processor), DIGITAL-VIDEO digital video output, microSD card slot, a JTAG port and 128MB of FastRAM. Vampire 500 V2 variant has an 44-pin IDE port, so every Amiga 500 had access to hard drives and CD/DVD-ROMs, while Vampire 600 variant relies on the existing IDE IDE controller in the Amiga 600, while speeding its data transfers. When mass memory is concerned, today Amigas (and Vampires) generally do not use traditional hard drives, but CF cards, SD cards and even m-SATA SSD drives, all three variants in combination with the appropriate IDE adapter.
Digital video output is something that enables contemporary Amiga users easy connection to existing monitors or TVs. Currently DIGITAL-VIDEO video output is reserved for games and software that use Retangerable Graphics (a SAGA driver must be installed on Amiga before the digital video output can be used). For games that use direct access to the original Amiga hardware chipset an Amiga RGB must be used (second monitor or older TV), but the Apollo team is already working on resolving this problem (by integrating all audio and video outpout to DIGITAL-VIDEO since comig core v3).
As part of the installation of SAGA drivers microSD comes alive allowing Amiga to use of new "hard disk". This disc is not auto bootable, but the elimination of this problem will also come in one of next revisions of the firmware card (meanwhile there is VampireBoot tool). For those who do not need SD card as storage, it can be used for Ethernet (Its called SDNet, its strange but it works). Speed is not a ideal, but is in fact is faster than currently available solutions that rely on the parallel or serial ports of Amigas.
Speaking of the latest versions of Apollo firmware („Vampire core“, example core 6 update 2016), it can be updated from AmigaOS after being downloaded (no complicated flash procedures), but newer ones require registration. Another way to flash Vampire is by using a special device (USB BLASTER) connected via JTAG connector, an option mostly used by software developers.

BENCHMARK

Tests of the current version of Vampire core, puts it far from the nearest competitor, about 2-3 times faster then 060 cards (Amiga vendors advertise Vampire v2 as 68040@200MHz or 68060@140MHz). HC508 is also keeping up well with performance corresponding to 68030 processor at 25Mhz.

COMPETITION

  Currently, on a waiting list for Vampire cards are more then 2 000 Amigans, and it is expected that new automatized production runs will make everyone waiting happy. For those impatient to play with their Amigas now, there are several similar products aiming at similar segment of market. AmigaKit offers new ACA1200 cards for Amiga1200, ACA630 for Amiga600 and ACA500+ for Amiga 500. Another interesting option for Amiga 500, especially for people from Serbia, is HC508 accellerator, made by Viktor Kečkeš. Card has 68 0000 CPU at 50Mhz, 8MB FastRAM, 40-pin IDE connector and CF card connector. Viktor has coded several configuration utilities to turn on and off certain abilities and card itself gives a great boost to problematic titles on Amiga 500, such as Frontier, while CF card and 8MB add a good basis for playing WHD Load Titles.

SOFTWARE

For a Quite long time a project designed to bring floppy games to hard drives of Amiga existed, named WHDLoad. Today signficant number of games has their „WHDLoad slaves“. What is significant for Vampire is that WHDLoad games and demos are for newer Motorola processors (040,060), automatically becoming compatible with Vampire cards. Since not really all games have their WHDLoad installs, some must be run from a floppy disk, but Vampires handles that too. As there is still a number of games that simply fail to run if the processor is faster than the standard Amiga 500/1000/2000 or 1200, Vampire introduced „Turtle mode“ in which the accelerator practically acts as a standard 68000 processor on the 7MHz. Since it has become increasingly hard to get 3.5 DD“ floppy media, there are solutions like  HxC SDCard floppy emulator and Amiga GOTEK's,.
The emergence of „Vampires“ encouraged developers to try to port some games that were previously unimaginable on 68k platform. In no particular order, among the new titles are: Mini Metal Slug, Cannonball (Enhanced Outrun), Rick Dangerous Enhanced,
Zelda - Return of the Hylian Enhanced Vampire Edition, OpenTyrian, OpenBor (Beats of Rage) ...
In addition to new games, accelerated Amiga is now a lot more ready for emulating other old machines, and accessing their software. ScummVM and MAME now work quite nice, while the via Fusion or ShapeShifter - Vampire becomes fastest Macintosh with a 68k processor (faster then famous PowerBook 190). Macintosh emulator is significant and because of this computer had some of the games that unfortunately never appeared on the Amiga, and now are fully playable: SimCity, Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Heart Of China, Abuse, Indiana Jones, Monkey Island 1 and 2, Heroes of Might and Magic 2, King's Quest subsequent sequels, Marathon and many others. Same way are now available and Photoshop 4, 6 Illustrator, Painter 4, Word 6, WordPerfect and other high quality programs published for Macintosh Classics.
The emergence of vampires has encouraged development of EmuTOS program, which practically emulates OS of Atari ST computer. EmuTOS enables installation of FreeMiNT operating system, used on high end Atari computers of that time (TT and Falcon) which gives access to many applications written for the „past angry competitor“.
3D games that appeared on the Amiga 90's, when the platform was beginning to fade, can now be played in „full glory“ and in high resolutions, impossible back in the days (we do start sound like Memberies?) Alien Breed 3D I and II, Breathless, Trapped 2, Gloom Deluxe, Fears, Genetic Species and others, but also have become a lot more playable. Open sourced PC games have also been ported to Vampized Amigas: Duke Nukem 3D, Doom 1 and 2, Descent, Hexen, Heretic Quake 1. Although most people remembers Amiga for the games they have played, part of the Amiga users have extensively used by many programs to work with graphics or sound design. Most of these can be run at a higher resolution via a digital video output. And a new version of Riva player appeared, using mentioned AMMX set of commands, allowing Amiga 600 to play videos. For those who are eager to code, Amiga assembler is expanded to support the new features of 68080 processors, while the DEVPAC added a set of macros for the same purpose. For those not familiar with assembler, ALB42 started the 68k ports FreePascal compiler for the Amiga, with all libraries needed to create a GUI program.
AROS project (Amiga Research Operating System), which is the reimplementation of the Amiga OS for x86 platform has recently revived its 68k branch, and this is another option that owners Vampire card can try. In addition to the drivers, a new monitor utility has been made, named MiniMon, a program that allows monitoring of basic parameters of work (CPU load, current clock), but also allows the inclusion or exclusion of Turtle mode, BlitSync mode and Super Scalar processors possibilities.

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

So far described represents only what offered by Vampire with the current publicly available version of the firmware. This however is not the end, because the work on the Apollo core continues. GOLD3 version is expected by end of year, that should bring some very interesting abilities. The most important is the implementation of the AGA graphics, thus the poor Amigas 500 and 600 will get the ability to run games written for the Amiga 1200/4000, while the incidental benefit is will be the standard chipset Amiga resolutions displayed via a DIGITAL-VIDEO digital video output, eliminating a need for second monitor.
Furthermore, the GOLD3 should bring integration of sound into digital output which will ease the connection of Vampire systems to modern TVs, eliminating a need for separate speakers. Most interesting feature will be ability to increase Chip RAM up to 4MB (AGA max was 2MB), while there will be a continuing development of CPU 68 080 (supports hyper-threading now), SD Boot driver, RTG drivers and other system components. On the hardware side, is currently working on the development of the Vampire 1200 accelerators, as well as the Vampire standalone Amiga compatible computer.
The Vampire forums discussed about the implementation of the FPU and MMU coprocessors, scanline emulation of the original Amiga resolution via a digital video output, a significant acceleration of work with internal IDE controller in the Amiga
600 (FAST-IDE A600), the ability to add network / wifi card and many other topics

CONCLUSION

All in all, during last two years the Amiga has completely revamped, raised from grave (pun intended), to the delight of those who continue to use them, including the author of the text, which would like to thank Majsta and Danilo for Vampire 500 and 600 cards and Victor on HC508 cards.

Useful links

Accellerators website apollo-accelerators.com 

Apollo Core CLICK HERE 
Amiga Projects EXTERNAL LINK

Authors website EXTERNAL LINK
 
  Translators add Ons:
 
  V500 premiere
  EXTERNAL LINK
 
  2 minutes Video
  EXTERNAL LINK   
  Dans review of V600 2016
  EXTERNAL LINK   
  Epsilons review
  EXTERNAL LINK 
  Member when Amiga was fun?
  EXTERNAL LINK 
  Jesse Royal Cool And Deadly
  EXTERNAL LINK 
  Earl 16 - Free The World
  EXTERNAL LINK 
  Hornsman Coyote - Ava kari (ft. Shazalakazoo & St. Sevqet)
  EXTERNAL LINK 
  Shazalakazoo - Zajon za preporod Srbije
  EXTERNAL LINK

Excellent read.

Story is free to spread. While here its reader-friendly,
for those who prefer HTML style with references,
here is note on facebook EXTERNAL LINK