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Documentation about the Vampire hardware

St?

John Heritage

Posts 111
17 Apr 2016 18:10


Hi folks - sorry for the dirty word here - "Atari ST" :) -- but I was curious if there was any chance we may see an Apollo type accelerator for the Atari ST platform?

Thanks :)

John


Thierry Atheist

Posts 644
18 Apr 2016 03:36


"Join the Dark Side... become an Amigan."

But seriously, you don't need an Atari ST accelerator.

When the standalone Apollo Core Amiga is released, someone can make an emulator that works on it, heck, there's an Atari emulator for Amigas already. So, you're all set, just have to wait about 2 to 4 months.

The standalone Apollo Core Amiga, has effectively been announced already.


Nixus Minimax

Posts 416
18 Apr 2016 15:59


As far as I know modern Atari ST stuff needs an MMU so even with emulation you won't be able to run this modern Atari software on an Amiga without MMU.

This being said, it has been pointed out several times that an MMU may be developed for Apollo but currently has very low priority because of the very limited MMU usage in Amiga software. If the Atari world became a significant market for Apollo, priorisation could change. This would require some business case by someone rooted in the ST scene, I guess.



John Heritage

Posts 111
18 Apr 2016 16:31


:) - I have joined the Dark side! .  I still have my original 520ST (which ran BBS Express ST and then FoReM), and 1040ST (Games), and later picked up a Mega STE (always wanted)..  but in the last year I've picked up an Amiga 500 (NTSC rev 5 - waiting for a compatible accelerator..  long hail Vampire 500 hopefully :)), and an Amiga 1200 (currently being repaired).

I do look forward to trying both Atari ST and 8-bit emulators on an Apollo/Vampire Amiga..


John Heritage

Posts 111
18 Apr 2016 16:35


Fair enough here and I didn't realize the MMU was an issue.  The main reason I'd love to (someday) see an STE accelerator would be for some of the 3D games on the ST (Elite, Starglider, FOFT, etc), and the later adventure games that made it to both STE and Falcon030 -- but typically were very slow unless you had a Falcon030.  I understand putting VIDEL and the Falcon sound/DSP chips would be a crazy ton of work (i.e. an STE --> Falcon upgrade), but just a faster STE would be very cool for a lot of applications.  The ST also has pretty good networking and storage already thanks to cartridge port upgrades (ethernet, USB), and the ACSI port on the back of all STs (Ultrasatan for storage). 

Thanks for the replies guys!


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
18 Apr 2016 19:05


Yes an accelerator for ATARI-ST could easily surely made.
The Vampire-500 or are very similar card will be very good for this.

For ATARI software MMU is not needed.

Only the NEO-TOS stuff for the Firebee-Coldfire now might need MMU.
Apollo/Vampire could also be a good upgrade for the Firebee.
The new Apollo High-End version (speedgrade ~400) will be a lot faster than existing Coldfires... So it would also move the Firebee to a new performance level.

For this is it was mentioned - an MMU would be needed.
Which technically is not a problem but was never a priority as AMIGA software has only limited benefit from MMU.




John Heritage

Posts 111
18 Apr 2016 21:03


Thanks Gunnar!

When I get a Vampire for my 500 (and later 1200) I'm going to try recompiling/running some of the publicly available 3D printing software on the Amiga..  There are "slicing" and printing softwares that are available in PERL; I'm curious how the 128MB of RAM is going to do.  The "hard" part will be interfacing with the USB Arduino for my printers, but I think I can find a way to talk to it via RS232 for sending commands and receiving status.

I think the super-fast Vampire should be fast enough to do this comfortably, the regular Vampire 500/1200 might also be..


Michael Nurney

Posts 283
29 May 2016 21:07


3d printing software on the Amiga ...

now that would be awesome!


Alan Haynes

Posts 140
30 May 2016 04:08


michael nurney wrote:

3d printing software on the Amiga ...
 
  now that would be awesome!

What would be awesome would be to be able to print to a Samsung Colour Laser MFC, an Epson 7520 MFC and a little Canon ip3000. Just some examples of printers in the last 10 years that I still use but only from PC, Mac and Linux. Let's learn to walk before we can run

Cheers,

Alan from Oz


Alan Haynes

Posts 140
30 May 2016 04:12


Oooops! what I really meant to say was, 3D printer drivers sound great but wouldn't printer drivers for regular printers be more beneficial for the masses first. When they are nailed then 3D drivers would be really awesome.

Alan from Oz


John Heritage

Posts 111
03 Jun 2016 21:30


Ironically I think the 3D printers (ex: makerbot, reprap, etc) are easier to print to in this case; the end print job is literally just sending lines of text over a serial port (or USB emulating serial) to the arduino which does the real translation for the printer motors..

The usual 'don't send too many lines of text', and 'make sure the printer isn't missing any commands' serial port type stuff applies here. 

"Running" would be printing to a google cloud printer from a classic Amiga :). 

posts 11